Mile High Sticking
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Colorado Avalanche’s New Website is a Dud

By Nadia Archuleta

Dec 7, 2015; Denver, CO, USA; Colorado Avalanche alumni and current players are presented before the game against the Minnesota Wild at Pepsi Center. Mandatory Credit: Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports
Dec 7, 2015; Denver, CO, USA; Colorado Avalanche alumni and current players are presented before the game against the Minnesota Wild at Pepsi Center. Mandatory Credit: Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports /
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The Colorado Avalanche, along with all NHL teams, has unveiled its new website design. The new websites have wiped out all the teams’ histories.

As a blogger about the Colorado Avalanche, I naturally visit the Avs website a lot. In fact, it’s my homepage in one browser — I’ve got to keep up to date.

During the All Star Break last season, NHL.com updated its website so it appears to have been designed by a high school amateur. I believe it’s supposed to more resemble the mobile device experience, but it truthfully comes across as bland and unprofessional. For someone trying to do research, it’s difficult to navigate. For example, the search button doesn’t reveal nearly as many results — and somehow rarely the ones I wanted.

According to USA Today, the new NHL website was designed by Major League Baseball’s digital business. So, as happened with analytics, baseball standards started determining how the NHL is run.

Throughout the rest of the season and off-season, though, team-run sites remained mostly the same. The only difference was that researching videos got hard. You could easily access videos from before the All Star Break. However, after a couple weeks, the post-ASB videos wouldn’t play on the team site anymore. You had to go to NHL.com.

This might not be a big deal for fans, but it was a pain in the ass for bloggers.

Well, last week I was on the Boston Bruins website to research what they were doing for training camp. I discovered the new, user-unfriendly format and exited. A quick peek at the Avs site revealed it was still old-style.

That has changed. I had it in mind to watch a Patrick Roy interview from last season. However, here’s what a search of Patrick Roy revealed:

Our Hall of Fame goalie, whose number is retired for the Colorado Avalanche, and who coached the team for three whole seasons was gone! You probably know me well enough by now to know I had a mini panic attack. (If not, check this post out.)

After a minute, I had enough presence of mind to research another Hall of Famer, someone else whose number is retired by the team:

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Yep, that’s right — our beloved Foppa, Peter Forsberg, no longer exists on the Colorado Avalanche site.

Is this more than just a pain in the butt for us poor bloggers trying to research the team? Yes. All those photos and videos from Patrick Roy’s tenure as coach as well as his and Peter Forsberg’s Stadium Series appearances are gone.

The Colorado Avalanche historical slate has been wiped clean. Is that really what the team meant by their new hashtag, #NextEra?

No, it is not. It is just more evidence of the MLB’s failure at organizing the NHL. This lack of history is an apparent oversight by the web designers.

I popped over the Bruins website again. Guess what:

No Ray Bourque.

Of course, even the Great One himself, Wayne Gretzky, is not immune:

For Pete’s sake — he won the Stanley Cup four times with the Edmonton Oilers! But, alas, that was before this summer, so it doesn’t count.

I can only hope that the MLB’s digital business is in the process of transferring all those photos and videos over to the new sites. Any reputable site has to have an archive, right?

Next: Avs Players with Fantasy Value

In any case, the Colorado Avalanche have a lot of new things going on in their #NextEra. The website might be the least on the list.

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