Dater's Avs 30 For 30

Personal stories from three decades writing on this team

I like to be forward-thinking with this site. It’s a site analyzing and discussing and reporting and talking about the current Colorado Avalanche, even if I’m not on the road anymore detailing every pulled groin or waiver-wire transaction.

But, hey, they say to use your “unfair advantage” in business, and one unfair advantage I have over everyone talking and analyzing and reporting about this team currently, on the road or off, is that I was there when the team wasn’t even a team yet. That was 30 years ago, so here’s a story from that first year, one of 30 I’ll try to tell during the season. They’re not going to be epic, longreads. Just quick retrievals from the memory bank.

FUNNY MONEY

The scene was Hamilton, Ontario, Sept. of 1995. It was there that the newly-named Colorado Avalanche would play the Calgary Flames in a preseason game at a building called the Copps Coliseum.

This was the first-ever road trip of the new team, a roughly 10-day odyssey through cities such as Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton, Cornwall, Ont., and Hartford. I had a ticket to ride for the trip.

At the team hotel in Hamilton, I got my first look at what “big time” money in pro sports looked like. I believe I was about to take a stroll of downtown Hamilton, but before I could exit the lobby I saw Avs player Owen Nolan standing at the front desk.