Colorado Avalanche: Matt Calvert’s Season in Review

Colorado Avalanche forward Matt Calvert quickly wormed his way into fans’ hearts his first season with the team.

The Colorado Avalanche acquired forward Matt Calvert in free agency last summer, and it was seen as something of a minor pickup. Indeed, for the most part he spent his days on the third line. He averaged 14:12 of ice time.

What’s more, you can’t say Calvert had much of a career year. Actually, it was a career year for him — 26 points (11 goals, 15 assists). Those are grinder stats if ever I saw them.

Naturally, Calvert’s physicality was more his type of contribution. He had 58 penalty minutes and six fights — both of those were career highs. He also laid opponents out with 115 hits, another career high. He was #5 on the team for that category.

So, a couple things about his fighting. His first fight of the year, he was still playing out old rivalries from when he played in the Eastern Conference with the Columbus Blue Jackets. He dropped the gloves with Fredrik Claesson of the New York Rangers. However, the rest of his fights were against Western Conference foes (Edmonton, LA, Nashville, Winnipeg, and Minnesota.)

Still, all that wasn’t his biggest contributions to the Colorado Avalanche. Rather, he was a heart and soul kind of guy all season long.

You talk about team-first guys, and on some level, most if not all players are team-first. However, Calvert put his money where his mouth is. And, in this case, he put his face where his mouth was:

With that incident, he joins the annals of Colorado Avalanche history. Though the Colorado-Detroit rivalry is in the past, Red Wings red is still very ugly to us here in Avs Nation. Seeing Wings players goon it up reminds us of bygone years.

What’s more, the player who actually removes his glove so he can suckerpunch Calvert is Tyler Bertuzzi. That last name should make your eye twitch because of Todd Bertuzzi’s attack on former Avs player Steve Moore. Indeed, Tyler is Todd’s nephew, thus proving the rotten apple doesn’t fall far from the dirty tree.

Matt, though bleeding, got the last laugh. Two, actually. Tyler Bertuzzi was suspended for two games for unsportsmanlike conduct. And when Colorado met Detroit again later in the year, Calvert claimed he didn’t even remember the incident. 😎

Now, before celebrating some of Calvert’s more mild-mannered contributions, let’s just take a moment to watch him beat down a (hated) Minnesota Wild player, JT Brown:

Sorry, JT, I luvs your wife on Twitter, but you had your passport handed to you here.

Somewhere in all of that, I feel like Calvert became the dad of the team. The Avs are a young team, and maybe having a dad like Matt isn’t a bad thing.

In fact, during the postseason, he became almost a literal dad. Our golden rookie, Cale Makar, asked the team to set him up to live with an older player. The team approached Calvert, who took it up with his wife, Courtney Rae. Long story short, the decision was that as long as Cale could hang with their two young kids, he had a home with the Calverts.

Cale could hang with two young kids since his billet family had also had tykes, and he’s part of the Calvert household now.

Finally, in the depths of February when the Colorado Avalanche were just starting to come out of their weeks-long slump, Matt Calvert gave us all something to smile about:

That’s right, Calvert shaved the sides of his hair to create one majestic hockey mullet. So here’s a man who puts his face and his hair where his mouth is.

The 29-year-old Calvert has two years left on his contract, and I have no doubt that some Avs fans will be bemoaning his lack of contributions the last year. At that time, I will direct them to this post of how quickly Calvert assimilated into Colorado Avalanche lore.