It was only the second game in Avalanche history in which there was no promise of another imminent contest. The other one was Game 7 of the 2001 Stanley Cup Finals, and the Avs finished as NHL champions that night.
Never before, however, had the Avs played a regular-season or playoff game in which there wasn’t at least hope for a tomorrow. But that didn’t stop them from playing as if Sunday night’s 2006-07 season finale was really a Game 7.
The Avs closed out their first nonplayoff campaign in team history with a 6-3 victory at the Pepsi Center over the team that beat them out by one point for the playoffs, the Calgary Flames. When it was over, Avs players saluted the crowd with raised sticks – and received a thundering, heartfelt ovation.
But today, they go their separate ways for a few months to ponder a 95-point season in which it took 96 to get another set of tomorrows.
“Next year, we’ll know how much those points mean at the beginning of the year,” said Avs veteran Ian Laperriere, who avenged Dion Phaneuf’s cheap shot hit from behind on Tyler Arnason with a pummeling of the Flames defenseman in a late-game fight. “It doesn’t matter how great you play for the last two months if you get that far behind. It’s something we should learn.”
Joe Sakic, at age 37, finished one of the best seasons of his marvelous career with three points, giving him 100, and he became the 14th player in NHL history to record 200 power-play goals. He finished tied for sixth in NHL scoring and got the biggest roar of the night when he skated one last time at the end as the game’s No. 1 star.
“He’s a great player, and he wants to be great every night,” said Avs coach Joel Quenneville, whose team’s point total was the most of any team in league history to miss the playoffs.
Quenneville gave what players said was an emotional pregame talk, in which he spoke of his pride in their 15-2-2 late-season run. Understandably, perhaps, the Avs didn’t seem too motivated to play early on, having been eliminated the night before by Nashville. But after Stephane Yelle beat Avs goalie Jose Theodore to give Calgary a 3-2 lead late in the second, the Avs dominated. Sakic, Wojtek Wolski, Paul Stastny and Scott Parker scored goals to give Theodore his first victory since Feb. 6.
“It was tough going into the game, but I like the way they played and competed,” Quenneville said.
In 2000, after the Avs lost to Dallas in the Western Conference finals, former general manager Pierre Lacroix said: “The best team lost.” A compelling case can be made that the better team between Colorado and Calgary is not going to the playoffs. The Avs beat the flickering Flames four straight times, and Calgary backed into the postseason, losers of their last four games.
But the Avs put themselves in an untenable hole entering the final third of the season, from too many blown leads and games in the first two-thirds. The Avs will rue the one point they failed to get in three losses to the lowly Los Angeles Kings, or the two to Chicago or the shutout at home to Columbus or the blown 2-0 lead on opening night to Dallas. Those games counted as much as the late-season thrillers.
“We have nobody to blame but ourselves for being in the spot we were in,” winger Andrew Brunette said. “It almost hurts more to be this close, though, than being way out.”
Staff writer Adrian Dater can be reached at 303-954-1360 or adater@denverpost.com.
