Colorado Avalanche fans can let Vegas Golden Knights fans know that too much success may come back too soon to bite you.
The Colorado Avalanche put it best on Twitter. After congratulating the Washington Capitals on winning the Stanley Cup, they posted the following tweet:
Now #IsItOctoberYet!? # GoAvsGo pic.twitter.com/wplzTnuXgR
– Colorado Avalanche (@Avalanche) June 8, 2018
For the vast majority of hockey fans, your fandom is watching the regular season ups and downs followed by a playoff run (if you’re lucky) that most of the time your team doesn’t win. Captain Garbriel Landeskog said it well too – the only win that counts is the last one in June.
And even that doesn’t count for long. While Alex Ovechkin sips his champagne from the Stanley Cup, most fans are already looking to the next season.
Just maybe the Vegas Golden Knights fans don’t know how to do it. You probably think that they will be in the glory days forever. I know I did that for the first few seasons with the Colorado Avalanche.
Colorado Avalanche First Stanley Cup
June 11, 1996: Colorado Avalanche captain Joe Sakic carries the Stanley Cup trophy after winning the Florida Panthers in triple overtime of the fourth game of the Stanley Cup Finals at the Miami Arena in Miami, Florida with 1: 0 defeated. Sakic received the Conn Smythe
As the Vegas Golden Knights made it through the Stanley Cup Finals, my nagging feeling was that they didn’t deserve it. And I felt bad for thinking that, because of course the Colorado Avalanche won a Stanley Cup in their first season in Denver.
After the Capitals won their first Stanley Cup in 44 years, I checked my Twitter feed for Salty Knights fans and saw a blogger buddy of mine who runs a great site called Sin Bin Vegas. He tweeted the following:
No matter what someone says, this is not how the story should end.
Congratulations to Washington.
Vegas’ day will come.
– SinBin.vegas (@SinBinVegas) June 8, 2018
I laughed a little. “There are no picture bookers in sport. Rarely, anyway. ”But then that nagging feeling came back – maybe, just maybe, that first Stanley Cup, which is my favorite … maybe the Avs * whisper-whisper-whisper. (Translating didn’t deserve to win … didn’t deserve to win.)
It has to be the height of the mess to be a Canadian city, Quebec, that lost its NHL team to financial reasons. Then to see homeboy Patrick Roy blowing his top and calling for a trade from the next team … to your old team. And then you see how HHoFer leads your old team to the Stanley Cup victory.
It’s really not fair. Not fair at all. But there were no changes, and Montreal would never have switched Roy to Quebec.
But that’s not how Quebec’s story should end. Nordiques fans shouldn’t watch their team go through horrific seasons like this 12-win season just to win games and even playoff series. and go to Colorado to win the Stanley Cup.
But that’s sports, sports fans. For every Ray Bourque / Alex Ovechkin who raises a cup, there are a hundred Jarome Iginla / Daniel Alfredsson / Henrik and Daniel Sedin / Paul Kariya / Pavel Bure … who have never won a Stanley Cup.
Vegas fans are going to have to design and develop a star like these guys – maybe Cody Glass? – before fans can understand this unique pain.
Because pain makes victory so much sweeter.
Suffering the lows to appreciate the highs
The 2016-17 season wasn’t a joke, it was a six month headache for Colorado Avalanche fans. The funny thing is that a Minnesota Wild fan trolling the Avs made a video that perfectly sums up this season:
The 2016-17 Colorado Avalanche are way better with Titanic music pic.twitter.com/UViaNLRP1Z
– Connor (@Kaprizov_) March 30, 2017
Players falling, Blake Comeau’s breakaway pass, players turning upside down, Tyson Barrie tripping over the puck … that was the 2016-17 season in the Colorado Avalanche.
And you know what? I love this video. Because when I look at it I have to laugh ruefully. Yes, that was my team. My team was so bad that there was a joke about who was likely to win the trophy this year, who was likely to make the playoffs, who would most likely not make the playoffs, who had no chance of making the playoffs, the teams who have favourited the playoffs were a joke for them … and then the avalanche.
But that acidity made this video clip, made a year later, all the sweeter:
🎶🎵⛴ENJOY THE WINNING WITH TITANIC MUSIC⛴🎵🎶 pic.twitter.com/QBcJOh1Jj1
– Lukas🏔⚾ (@SkiingGod) April 21, 2018
The 2017/18 season felt so much better because the preseason was so bad.
More from Mile High Sticking
What I like about the 2016-17 season – aside from the fact that it gives us a strange bragging rights: “You think your season is bad. 48 points. Lost the draft lottery completely. ”- is that the team has not lost any fans in my opinion. Fairweather fans had long since fled, either trapped in the glory days or waved off the revival of the 2013-14 season.
The fan base that remained in 2016-17 was the core of the wrinkled Avs fans, who pursed their lips and tormented their way through this season’s embarrassments.
This is the following that the Vegas Golden Knights need to develop. To be clear, I have every expectation that they will. Once the new hockey fans find that 99% of sports fans are disappointed that at the end of each year only one fan base is happy and the odds are 30: 1, it won’t be yours, the Pollyannas will drift away.
So, Vegas fans “proudly” wear their knight colors and put on VGK Mickey Mouse ears at Disney World … Sorry folks, I’m not impressed.
But it will be me I will be if you wear your VGK colors long after this magical time of year. If you can argue the merits of analytics over the eye test. If you can easily joke that nobody knows what is offside, let alone interference from the goalkeeper.
If your team has seen its inevitable decline and you still support them – then I’ll be impressed.
Because doom will come. You can ask Oilers, Rangers, Canadiens fans. You can ask the Quebecois in Canada, still without the Stanley Cup.
But take it from us, the Colorado Avalanche believers. We had the Hall of Famers on our team in the first ballot from 2001. And less than a decade later, we were in the top 3 because of such bad seasons. And then forty-eight points happened.
Buckle up, Vegas fans. Hockey is going to be real soon.
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