Eight years after he bought a home in Morrison and made it the base for his family in the offseason, Avalanche defenseman Ken Klee finally is getting to spend a Christmas at home.
“I’m real excited,” Klee said after the Avalanche’s 3-2 win over Chicago on Saturday night. “My family’s real excited. It’s a chance to stay home, at our real home, and it’s a white Christmas. We got 40 inches. I slid off my driveway, too.”
Klee was in the midst of a nine-season run with the Washington Capitals when he remembered advice he had gotten as a rookie, from older teammate Dave Poulin. Poulin’s suggestion: In the nomadic world of hockey, nothing can be taken for granted. So why not buy a home where you want to live, at least in the offseason while you’re playing, and also after your career is over?
Klee, who was born in Indianapolis, had lived in Broomfield when he was young, and played his first hockey there. But his father again was transferred, first back to Indianapolis, and then on to Kansas City, before he went to Toronto to play junior B hockey, briefly as a teammate of Eric Lindros with the St. Michael’s program.
After three seasons of college hockey at Bowling Green, Klee signed with the Capitals in 1992 and spent two seasons and part of a third in the American Hockey League before cracking the Washington roster.
During the 1998 Olympic break, he and his wife, shopped for and settled on a home in the Denver area. The irony was that he wasn’t all that nomadic until the past few seasons, after he left the Capitals to sign with Toronto in 2003 and then went from the Maple Leafs to the Devils at the trading deadline last spring.
Finally, he had a chance to come to Colorado and took it, signing a one-year, $700,000 contract with the Avalanche, meaning he, his wife and three children all could stay in the Morrison house year-round, including Christmas.
With fellow American Jordan Leopold back on the injured list and with his return uncertain, Klee’s spot in the Avs’ defensive rotation is secure again. During Leopold’s brief, five-game stint on the active roster, Klee was a healthy scratch one night, as Colorado coach Joel Quenneville rotated the night-off status among Klee, Patrice Brisebois and Ossi Vaananen. Klee also played one game at wing on the fourth line before Leopold went out again with a groin injury that is expected to keep him out until at least mid-January.
Klee is getting a lot of time on the penalty kill, where the Avalanche has been stingy of late, and his plus-14 is the best figure on the team. That all has helped Colorado pull into a three-way tie for first place in the Northwest Division, with Minnesota and Edmonton, at 38 points. Calgary is another point back, and the Flames have played two fewer games than the three leaders. Fifth-place Vancouver is only three points out of first.
“It used to be you could say, ‘OK, these five or six teams are definitely making the playoffs,”‘ Klee said. “Now you can’t say that as much. You look at a team like L.A. last year at this point. They were something like 20 points ahead of everybody and they ended up missing the playoffs. We know this is going to come down to the wire and we just have to try to get as many points as we can.”
Footnotes
The Avalanche didn’t practice Sunday and won’t on Christmas, either, under the terms of the league’s collective bargaining agreement. The NHL resumes with 12 games Tuesday, but the Avs are off until they meet Dallas at the Pepsi Center on Wednesday. … Joe Sakic’s goal and assist against Chicago moved him within three of cracking the NHL’s all-time top 10 in points. He has 1,528 career points, and Paul Coffey had 1,531. Next up would be Sakic’s former teammate Ray Bourque, who is ninth at 1,579.
Staff writer Terry Frei can be reached at 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
