American ice hockey team the Colorado Avalanche based in Denver, which competes in the Western Conference of the NHL (NHL). They have two Stanley Cup titles to their name (1996 and 2001).
The Quebec Nordiques (French: “Northerners”) were the team’s original name, and the franchise was originally based in Quebec, Canada.
WHA champions Réal Cloutier and Marc Tardif were the team’s leading scorers in the WHA from 1972 to 1979, leading the team to a championship in 1977. When the WHA and NHL merged prior to the 1979–80 season, the Nordiques were one of four WHA teams to join the NHL.
The squad acclimated swiftly to the NHL’s higher level of play, making the playoffs for the first time in its second season. Peter Stastny and Michel Goulet led the Nordiques to the conference finals in the 1981–82 and 1984–85 seasons, respectively.
The Nordiques, on the other hand, began a five-year stretch in which they finished last in their division in 1987–88. Quebec also had the worst record in the NHL three times throughout this timeframe.
In spite of the team’s long-term ineptitude, the Nordiques were able to assemble a core of young players that helped the team return to the playoffs in 1992–93 and to post the best conference record in 1994–95.
The team’s success on the ice was hampered by the fact that it was playing in the NHL’s smallest market.
The Nordiques’ owner sold the franchise to a Denver-based entertainment corporation after failing to strike an agreement with the Quebec provincial government that would have alleviated the team’s debt and built a new arena. The team moved to Colorado in the summer of 1995.
During the 1995–96 season, the newly renamed Colorado Avalanche (often shortened to “Avs”) shocked the NHL by trading for star goalkeeper Patrick Roy from the Montreal Canadiens, where he had been with the organisation for the previous decade.
The Avalanche were easily able to win another division title because to Roy’s outstanding goaltending and the strong defensive performance of Joe Sakic and Peter Forsberg.
To make history, the Colorado Avalanche won a Stanley Cup victory in their very first season in their new home city by thrashing the Florida Panthers in the 1996 finals of the NHL playoffs.
A three-time finalist in the Western Conference Finals between 1996–97 and 1999–2000, Colorado was one of the most dominant teams in the Western Conference at the conclusion of the decade.
The Colorado Avalanche won 52 games in 2000-01, the most in team history, and went on to win the Stanley Cup after a seven-game series against the New Jersey Devils.
Since its NHL-record ninth consecutive division triumph in 2002–03, the Avalanche have regularly finished with winning records, but they have not had much success in the playoffs since the beginning of the first decade of the 21st century.
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The Avalanche’s decline continued in the 2010s, when they missed the playoffs for the first time since the team’s relocation to Colorado. When Roy was named head coach in 2013, Colorado saw a dramatic increase in the team’s performance in the first season under his guidance.
After losing in the second round of the playoffs in 2019–20, the Avs won the Presidents’ Trophy for the best overall record in 2020–21. This was the third year in a row that the squad was eliminated in the second round of the playoffs. (Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, both the 2019–20 and 2020–21 seasons were cut short, and the latter season also included a new team alignment.)
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