Letting go isn’t easy.
Perhaps that’s why some fans on both sides still lay claim to a bitter rivalry between the Colorado Avalanche and the Detroit Red Wings.
I was surprised recently when a local sports radio station posed the question as to whether the rivalry lives on.
I say this rivalry died a long time ago. If I had to pinpoint the final chapter, I’d go with Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals in 2002 when the Red Wings took out the defending Stanley Cup champions and embarrassed Patrick Roy with a convincing 7-0 win.
The next season (02/03), Roy retired. When he left the game, the rivalry left with him.
Claude Lemieux may have been the central figure initially, but Roy was a huge part of the heated rivalry. Who can forget his role in the Red Wings-Avalanche brawl in 1997 when he fought Red Wings goalie Mike Vernon and his follow-up bout the next season with goalie Chis Osgood? Roy loved the spotlight, didn’t he?
Some fans and hockey commentators have suggested that a scrappy playoff series between the two teams could revive the rivalry.
I don’t see it that way. As NHL.com correspondent Rick Sadowski says in his look back at the rivalry on NHL.com, few players remain from when the rivalry was at its highest point. Draper, Maltby, Lidstrom and Osgood are still there for Detroit. Yelle, Foote and Hejduk remain for Colorado. Any passion and intensity of feeling though are missing.
The Red Wings and Avalanche met in the playoffs in 2008 and it wasn’t much of a contest… and it wasn’t fought with the same brand of passion that we saw in some of the epic battles from the past. The Wings dominated from the first drop of the puck in the series and went on to sweep the Avs.
The rivalry had died long before.
Could a rivalry resurface? Sure. But then we’d have a new story, not a new chapter. As I said, the last chapter of the Avalanche-Red Wings rivalry was written back in the Western Conference finals in 2002.
Photo credit: eapdesign on Flickr
