NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, the man who tried to save hockey by dismantling the Avalanche, was in the house.
It must have pained Bettman to watch the Avs beat Dallas 4-3 in overtime Wednesday night.
Bettman took a hatchet to Colorado’s payroll, but the commish cannot kill the Avalanche’s dream of winning the Stanley Cup.
Alex Tanguay scored the game-winner 69 seconds into the extra period to give the underdog Avs an unlikely 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven series against Dallas, which entered the playoffs with a lofty No. 2 seed in the Western Conference.
Underdog Avs? That sounds wrong, sounds unjust for a franchise that worked so hard to maintain its status among the NHL’s elite for so long. For the first time since the franchise moved to Denver, there is no playoff pressure on the home team. And it shows.
The Avalanche forced Dallas to cough up the lead for the third straight game. “That’s a recipe for disaster,” Stars coach Dave Tippett said.
Colorado must now win as much with resiliency and grit as with talent and speed because parity is what Bettman wanted.
Bettman pushed through a salary cap, and all it required was pulling the plug on an entire season.
He proudly calls this hard-earned parity “leveling of the ice.”
In the process, Bettman slashed the budget of Colorado, one of the few teams in the league that actually knew how to operate a business. It felt like a cheap shot to the hearts of Avalanche fans who had filled the arena for years.
General manager Pierre Lacroix was forced to cut the team’s budget from the $62 million of 2004 to a paltry $39 million this season.
Try cutting your grocery bill by 33 percent and see how well you eat.
Bettman tried his best to turn the Avs, Detroit and every other well- financed franchise into Hamburger Helper.
Like any red-blooded American, I’m as much for fairness as the next guy, so long as it doesn’t cost me anything.
In other words: Bettman might care if the Edmonton Oilers go broke. But I don’t. Do you?
Peter Forsberg no longer skates for the Avalanche because Bettman decided that was a sacrifice you and I had to make for the good of the game.
To which I say: Phooey.
So I asked Bettman: Did he ever worry about penalizing a Colorado team that knew what it was doing in order to prop up the league’s weak and infirm franchises?
“There were a lot of issues being raised about how Detroit and Colorado would adjust,” Bettman said. “I think both clubs, as a testament to management in both places, did a great job adjusting.”
To be commissioner, you must be comfortable patting the same back where you stuck that knife.
“Anytime you implement a new system,” Bettman said, “there are going to be some immediate impacts.”
Yeah, we noticed defenseman Adam Foote walking out the door, which meant there were a lot of expensive replica jerseys thrown in the dark end of Colorado closets to gather dust.
“But long term,” Bettman said, “in terms of product on the ice and the competitiveness, this is good for all our franchises, including Colorado.”
As the Avs were taking the ice for Game 3, Forsberg was celebrating his second goal of the night for Philadelphia during a playoff victory on the other side of the country.
The way Colorado wins now is with the feistiness of Ian Laperriere.
The way the Avalanche attacks the playoffs now is with the youthful exuberance of Wojtek Wolski.
Now, when the team needs a prayer answered to tie the score in the final minute of regulation, the hero is a grinder named Andrew Brunette.
The Avs are committed to being a team. How refreshing.
Commitment and teamwork are words their neighbors in the Pepsi Center, those me-me-me Nuggets, do not know how to spell, much less understand.
Bettman tried to achieve parity by reducing the Avalanche to mediocrity.
Sorry, commish. You lost.
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-820-5438 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
