Colorado Avalanche fans can advise Vegas Golden Knights fans on how too much success can 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:
Well, #IsItOctoberYet!? # GoAvsGo pic.twitter.com/wplzTnuXgR
– Colorado Avalanche (@Avalanche) June 8, 2018
For the vast majority of ice 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 also said it well – the only win that counts is the last one in June.
And even that doesn’t count for too long. Even if Alex Ovechkin drinks his champagne from the Stanley Cup, most fans are already looking forward 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 the Colorado Avalanche for the first few seasons.
Colorado Avalanche First Stanley Cup
June 11, 1996: Colorado Avalanche captain Joe Sakic carries the Stanley Cup trophy after beating the Florida Panthers 1-0 in triple overtime in the fourth game of the Stanley Cup Finals at the Miami Arena in Miami, Florida . Sakic was awarded the Conn Smythe
When the Vegas Golden Knights made one pass through the Stanley Cup Finals, my uncomfortable feeling was that they didn’t deserve it. And I felt bad thinking that 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. I saw a blogger friend of mine who runs a great website called Sin Bin Vegas. He tweeted the following:
I don’t care what anyone says, that’s not how this story should end.
Congratulations to Washington.
Vegas day is coming.
– SinBin.vegas (@SinBinVegas) June 8, 2018
I laughed a little to myself. “There are no storybook endings in sports. Rarely, anyway. “But then that annoying 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 deserves to win.)
It has to be the culmination of being a Canadian city, Quebec, that lost its NHL team to financial reasons. Then to see homeboy Patrick Roy do his best and ask for a trade from the neighboring team … 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. No overlaps, and Montreal would never have traded Roy for Quebec.
But that’s not how Quebec’s story should end. Nordiques fans shouldn’t watch their team slip through horrific seasons like the 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 wins 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 need to design and develop a star like this – 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 for Colorado Avalanche fans, it was a six-month headache. What’s funny is a Minnesota Wild fan who trolls the Avs and made a video that perfectly sums up this season:
The 2016-17 Colorado Avalanche are much better with the Titanic music pic.twitter.com/UViaNLRP1Z
– Connor (@Kaprizov_) March 30, 2017
Players fall, Blake Comeau’s escape pass, players get excited, Tyson Barrie stumbles on the puck … that was the 2016-17 Colorado Avalanche season.
And you know what? I love this video. As I watch it, I can laugh ruefully. Yes, that was my team. My team was so bad that there was a joke about who was likely to win the cup 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 make it through 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 PROFIT WITH TITANIAN MUSIC⛴?? pic.twitter.com/QBcJOh1Jj1
– Luke?⚾ (@SkiingGod) April 21, 2018
The 2017/18 season felt so much better because the previous season 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 braggart right: “You think your season is bad. 48 points. I lost the Draft Lottery completely. “- I don’t think the team lost any fans. Fairweather fans had long since fled, either trapped in the glory days or waved off the resurgence of the 2013-14 season.
The fan base, abandoned from 2016-17, was the core of cocky Avs fans eager to blow their lips and get over this season’s embarrassment.
This is the following that the Vegas Golden Knights need to develop. To be clear, I have every expectation that they will. As soon as the new ice hockey fans discover 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 the colors of their knights and put on Mickey Mouse ears at Disney World VGK … Sorry folks, I’m not impressed.
But it will be me. I will be if you wear your VGK colors long after this magical season. If you can argue the merits of analytics over the eye test. If you can easily joke that no one knows what’s offside, let alone the goalkeeper intervening.
If your team has seen an inevitable decline and you still support them, I’ll be impressed.
Because doom is coming. You can ask Oilers, Rangers, Canadiens fans. You can ask the Quebecois in Canada who don’t yet have a Stanley Cup.
But take it from us, the Colorado Avalanche believers. We had the Hall of Famers on our team in 2001. And less than a decade later, we moved into the top three because of those bad times of the year. And then forty-eight points happened.
Buckle up, Vegas fans. Hockey is going to be real soon.
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