Did a team meeting in San Jose turn the Avalanche season around?

First off, I’ve covered some great Avalanche teams that had a lot of great team meetings. Or, some very turbulent team meetings. There was the one in 1999 where Bob Hartley tried to suss out who might have been leaking things to the media (me) about Eric Lacroix being a distraction on the team, and falsely accused Milan Hejduk of doing it. Milan, at the time, could barely speak any English. That led to Patrick Roy and Claude Lemieux both standing up and saying it wasn’t Hedgie and basically telling Hartley to knock it off.

Then there was the Feb. 15, 1996, team meeting in Tampa that lasted about 45 minutes. The Avs had just lost to the Lightning, 4-2, and us media stood right outside the locker room and you could hear a lot of naughty words. That Avs team went on to win a Stanley Cup.