The 1996 Colorado Avalanche didn’t take long to take make themselves comfortable in their new home. In the first season after relocating from Quebec and changing their name from the Nordiques to the Avalanche, Colorado not only won a Stanley Cup, but upended one of the NHL’s all-time great regular season teams in the process.
The year in 1996 sports was marked by one in which proud franchises or programs returned to the top after what each would consider a lengthy absence. Continuing the theme would be a singularly great player who made a celebrated return and led his team on a historic run.
The 1996 Stanley Cup Finals paired up two teams that the hockey world hadn’t expected to see there. The Colorado Avalanche and Florida Panthers each had different levels of standing so far as prestige and regular season success, but both were surprise entrants in the Finals.
1996 was a great year to be a sports fan in the Denver area. To begin with, the city got the Quebec Nordiques to relocate and become the Colorado Avalanche, enabling Denver to join the ranks of cities with teams in all four major professional sports leagues—only four years earlier they’d had just the Broncos & Nuggets. Now, with the Rockies and Avalanche, Denver was better off in ’96 than they were four years earlier, an appropriate motto for what was a presidential election year. Things only got better when the Avalanche won the Stanley Cup their first year in town. And football season provided a good dessert to the main course, as the Broncos and the University of Colorado each made spirited runs at the top. TheSportsNotebook looks back on ’96 in the Rockies…