Adrian Dater
EDMONTON, ALBERTA – Outside of Rogers Place Saturday, a light-rail station that normally would be humming with activity on a game day for the Edmonton Oilers sat quietly, a tumbleweed or two from the hot, humid summer wind occasionally blowing across the tracks.
Inside the vast newish arena, one of the fanciest, most amenity-rich in the NHL, the sounds of workers scraping the ice to better-embed the goalposts can easily be heard three concourses up. It’s only a few minutes before the Oilers are to host the Chicago Blackhawks, when normally a sellout crowd of hockey-crazy Edmontonians would be chanting, “Let’s Go Oil!” Outside the building, there are more pigeons surrounding the Wayne Gretzky statue than hockey fans.
It will be in this kind of setting – for potentially as far out as Oct. 2 – that the Colorado Avalanche will pursue the third Stanley Cup in the team’s 25-year history. There won’t be any hometown cheers, nor any road jeers. The atmosphere will be as sterile as one of the several hand-sanitizer stations that dot parts of the building – the ones that have any kind of foot traffic at all, at least.
Covid is scarce overall here in Alberta, but its reputation still looms large over these proceedings. Just today, the city of Edmonton re-instituted a mandatory mask rule for all indoor businesses (at least, upon entry). Indeed, it’s quiet here in Edmonton. Avalanche players, though, have a vision in their heads:
Pan in, ice level, Rogers Place, players of the Colorado Avalanche shriek and holler and high-elbow to a Stanley Cup championship. Nathan MacKinnon yells ‘We’re comin’ home with the Cup, Denver!’ as he hands it off to Erik Johnson, who yells, ‘It’s Erik, with a K, Mr. Stanley Cup engraver!”
Can the Avs get there? Can this daydream become verifiable history, forever and ever?
It’ll all come down to how well they play hockey in these next two months, how much luck goes their way and how well they can do more than just visualize. It’ll still come down to outplaying another group of grown men, on a real sheet of ice, over three round-robin games (against St. Louis, Dallas and Vegas) and through potentially four, best-of-seven rounds.
I think this team can do it. I think it has the potential to do it. But saying it and doing it are two totally different things in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
There were so many fortunate things that happened to the Avs in the years they won their two Cups. In 1996, Pavel Bure – a Hall of Famer – was injured in the first round for Vancouver against the Avs. Still, it took Colorado six tough games to win that series.
In the second round, Tony Amonte was lost in Game 3 after a hit from Adam Foote. He was/is one of the best United States hockey players ever. In Game 2, Ed Belfour and Murray Craven supposedly got food poisoning and couldn’t play (a blowout Avs win, after they dropped Game 1 at home). In the third round, Steve Yzerman pulled a groin muscle and was never quite right. In the Finals, well,…they drew the Florid Panthers.
In 2001, the won it all despite Peter Forsberg being inactive for the final two rounds. Imagine losing PETER FORSBERG to your lineup as the conference finals are about to start. Yet, the Avs found a way.
Who knows what kind of fortune or misfortune awaits the Avs as the round-robin portion of the playoffs begin tomorrow. But let me try to forecast something in either case…
THINGS THAT MAKE ME THINK THEY CAN – AND VERY WELL MIGHT – WIN IT ALL THIS YEAR
THINGS THAT MAKE ME WORRY A BIT STILL
No matter what happens from Sunday on out, everyone involved with this thing will have unique memories that very few people will ever relate. When I checked the media seating chart for the Oilers-Blackhawks game, there were 22 officially credentialed members. Usually, the number is at least five times that for NHL playoff hockey.
That’s it. That’s their crowd basically, a bunch of mask-wearing knights of the keyboard three levels up.
You’re not supposed to cheer in the press box.
But if the Avs actually win this thing, after this kind of road ahead? Yeah, I’ll let out a whoop in all of your honor.