During a sweaty-palms moment of a 4-3 shootout victory against Detroit, Avalanche president Pierre Lacroix emerged from his private booth high above the arena ice to offer a handshake.
“All the best,” said Lacroix, wishing a happy new year to an old foe in the media.
Lacroix, the architect of two Stanley Cup championship teams in Colorado, then paused a second before he amended the core meaning of his well wishes.
“All the best health,” he said.
If you have your health, the rest is easy.
“Yes,” Lacroix said.
And maybe there’s the real question for the Avs: Will they ever be healthy enough to enjoy 2009?
A franchise far removed from its glory days was not expected to make much noise this NHL season.
And that was before captain Joe Sakic’s back went out in the weight room or his hand was munched by a snowblower.
A playoff berth for the Avalanche was an iffy proposition even before leading scorer Paul Stastny got a lousy broken arm for Christmas.
That’s why beating Detroit counts for way more than two points in the standings for Colorado.
“This league wanted parity, and that’s what it got. So, most nights, regardless of whether we’ve lost our top two centers, it’s the team that competes that will win,” veteran Avs defenseman Adam Foote said.
Although short on talent, the Avs displayed plenty of spunk during their neutral-ice game at the Pepsi Center against longtime hated rival Detroit.
Neutral ice? Sad, but true.
The most unsettling trend in the blood feud between the Avs and Wings might not be that Detroit remains a legit Cup contender while Colorado now too often seems like a gritty pretender. What really grates is how many Detroit fans treat the 303 like their own area code.
What gives? There were more Red Wings sweaters in the building on this Saturday night than red Chrysler Sebrings were sold in the Motor City during the entire month of December.
So it was reassuring to hear the roof rattle with cheers for the Avalanche when goalie Peter Budaj stoned Detroit center Jiri Hudler to preserve the victory in the shootout.
“The rivalry is still there, especially for the fans,” Avs coach Tony Granato said.
This stretch of bumpy ice experienced by Colorado would cause many teams to take a nasty pratfall. But it must be said the Avs have been kept on their skates by Granato, whose promotion to a second stint as the lead man on the team’s bench was met with perplexed shrugs and outright derision.
Granato, however, seems to walk, speak and breathe with more self-assurance than he did when doing the same job from 2002-04.
Granato has not allowed sometimes shaky goaltending to destroy the team’s confidence, and more important, he has not trashed Budaj as a convenient scapegoat. The coach has not been afraid to call out Tyler Arnason for lack of production, only to show enough faith in the 29-year-old veteran to center the No. 1 line against the Wings. And the refusal to let injuries become an excuse for failure begins at the top.
“No matter who’s in the lineup, we have to find a way to win,” said Granato, who holds Colorado’s tradition of hockey excellence in reverence, in no small part because revenue from home playoff games are so essential to the Avalanche’s bottom line.
Against Detroit, the Avs got a dirty-work goal and a handy assist from Ryan Smyth. Good thing. This is his team now.
“I think he has taken a little bit more responsibility in understanding how critical these games are. (Smyth) competes. There’s nothing that scares him,” Granato said.
While Smyth has also been cursed by injury since joining the Avs, it would be hard to say he has paid the anticipated dividends on the five-year, $31 million contract he signed when joining Colorado as a free agent in July 2007.
If the Avs are to hang within striking distance of a Western Conference playoff berth during the lengthy recovery periods facing Stastny and Sakic, it must be Smyth who provides the steady hand and the clutch goals.
Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com
