It was 25 years ago today that the Avalanche came to Denver to play

Where…did…the…time…go? Twenty-five years ago today, Denver got a hockey team. They were named the Quebec Nordiques at the time, and it would be another couple of months before they officially got a different name.

With today being the “silver” anniversary of the momentous move of the Nordiques to Denver, I thought I’d empty out my memory vault from that day, that time in general. My gosh, things seemed so different then…

I’ve told this part of the story before, but this is when it all became official: On the evening of May 24, 1995, I got a phone call from the public relations guy of Comsat Video Enterprises, a company that mostly drew its lifeblood from hotel movie rentals (how quaint, how dated does that seem, right?). His name was Paul Jacobson, and I’d been occasionally in contact with him the previous three months or so, after I was fortunate enough to break the story that Comsat had made a $75 million bid for the distressed Nordiques and move them to Denver to be the other winter tenant at McNichols Sports Arena with the other team they owned, the Denver Nuggets.

Jacobson’s immediate words to me were: “The team is ours.”