DENVER-
Avalanche captain Joe Sakic doesn’t care about the NHL playoffs.
Now that Colorado’s season is over—missing the playoffs for the first time since the 1993-94 season—Sakic is done with hockey, for the time being.
“I don’t really have interest in watching it,” Sakic said Monday after signing a one-year deal. “It’s not going to be fun sitting back.”
A late-season charge almost vaulted the Avalanche into the postseason. But Colorado ended up a point out of the final playoff spot despite going 15-2-2 down the stretch. The Avalanche finished with 95 points, becoming the first team in NHL history to record at least 93 points and not make the playoffs.
“I think our season was a great success,” Colorado GM Francois Giguere said. “Are we disappointed we didn’t make the playoffs? Of course we are. The future of this organization is promising.”
That’s due in part to the rookies, Paul Stastny and Wojtek Wolski. They became the first teammates to finish among the top five rookie scorers since Dany Heatley and Ilya Kovalchuk in 2001-02.
The play of the rookies this season was one of the reasons Sakic, 37, decided to return for a 19th season.
“With the way the young kids played this season, I really believe we grew up as a team,” said Sakic, who led the team in points (100), goals (36) and assists (64). “I’m very excited about what we have here.”
However, the Avalanche’s youth may have been a reason for the slow start.
“I think with a new team and new faces it took a little bit longer to gel,” forward Ian Laperriere said. “It’s the only thing I can point to. But to come back from that far like we did, I’ve never been a part of something like that.”
But missing the playoffs by a point? It’s enough to drive players crazy thinking about where they could’ve picked up an additional point. The Avalanche strung together just two three-game winning streaks all season before their final streak, which began in late February.
“If you look back and say, ‘We should have won this one game, we would have been in.’ Blah, blah, blah,” Laperriere said. “We like the way we’ve been playing the last two months and hopefully next year we’ll start with the same attitude and go from there.”
The Avalanche suffered a blow before the season began when Steve Konowalchuk was diagnosed with a heart condition in training camp, leading to his retirement. The team also played a significant portion of the season without defenseman Jordan Leopold, who missed time thanks to a fractured wrist, groin injury and hernia surgery.
In coach Joel Quenneville’s estimation, though, two things hurt the Avalanche—their record at home and inability to kill penalties. The Avalanche were 22-16-3 at the Pepsi Center and finished 24th out of 30 teams in killing penalties.
“There are certainly things we have to be better at,” he said.
Yet Quenneville still found it hard to believe the Avalanche didn’t make the postseason.
“Going into the season, if you had to pick a number of how many points it was going to take to make the playoffs, you would have said 95 points,” Quenneville said. “We were certainly disappointed it wasn’t enough. The 44 wins (we had) is the most since 2001-02. It was more wins than another team (Atlanta) winning a division. I don’t find solace in that. We’re here to make the playoffs.”
One of the offseason issues Giguere has to figure out is what to do with the goaltender situation. Peter Budaj played well as a starter, supplanting the high-priced Jose Theodore, who was brought in a season ago to be the top goalie. Budaj became just the third goalie in franchise history to win 30 games.
Giguere was noncommittal on the future of Theodore.
“We’re going to do all we can to put the best team on the ice,” Giguere said. “As far as I’m concerned, you have to be careful about putting too much emphasis on the salary. He came in, he worked hard, he had a 24-year-old goalie that came up and did a great job.”
No matter how Colorado’s late-season charge is spun, the Avalanche will be spectators for the playoffs for the first time since the franchise moved from Quebec before the 1995-96 season.
“I don’t think any season’s a success unless you have the Stanley Cup, especially in Denver,” defenseman John-Michael Liles said. “(Denver) prides itself on championship teams. It will be a long offseason.”
