Sweeps Week

“I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”
Colonel Bill Kilgore in Apocalypse Now

For any recent transplants living in Colorado who may be wondering what it is like to truly become a Denver sports fan, welcome to the fraternity.

And I thought the Broncos losing to the 49ers 55-10 in the Superbowl was embarrassing. Silly me. As it turns out the end of the worst week in Colorado sports history couldn’t have been more, well, sickly poetic?

This post-season of futility began with the Nuggets going down to Kobe Bryant and the Lakers without much of a fight, and ended with the Avalanche getting run out of their building by a team that nearly everyone living at altitude loves to hate.

Over the last year the Rockies, Nuggets and Avalanche have all been broomed from the playoffs in unceremonious fashion. Thanks for playing, guys.

To be a Denver sports fan one must realize a simple tenet: our teams lose important games more often than they win them…and much of the losing happens during times when our teams are thrust into the limelight by previous successes, which seem to be designed by Satan specifically to get our hopes up.

In a state where most people come to escape, there is no escaping an inferiority complex honed by years of "almost-getting-there-and-getting-blown-out-in-the-process."

Joe Sakic can’t go out like this, and something tells me he won’t. Even if our last memories of Peter Forsberg may be of him again kicking back in a lawn chair in Örnsköldsvik. It was nice having you tour with the band again, Pedro.

Fortunately the youngsters on the Avalanche now have experienced both the playoffs and massive playoff humiliation. With the right attitude this experience can become a tool for future success, as the Avalanche (barring a two-month long dip into their past) should continue to build in the right direction, a direction in which Jose Theodore is hopefully shown the door.

So let the construction on a new season begin! The future is still bright in Colorado, even if it may take some time for this most recent loss to fade into distant memory.



(Thanks to all who have read the page during the season. Barring a few comments and blurbs during the summer the DNP will return just in time for training camp, even if the recent economy is forcing its writer to relocate to Phoenix. Yes, Phoenix. No I’m not going to become a Yotes fan, even though a close proximity to The Great One and Daniel Carcillo should yield a number of high quality “desert hockey” jokes.)