Colorado Avalanche: Pondering how Nazem Kadri Will Adjust to His New Team

The Colorado Avalanche’s new center, Nazem Kadri, will face some adjustments with his new team. Hopefully he enjoys them.

The Colorado Avalanche acquired center Nazem Kadri in a trade to anchor their second line. He comes with a great resume that includes three 50+ point seasons and an additional three 40+ point seasons.

We know he’s going to augment that second line, providing the pivot we’ve needed. And he’ll be in the Avs family for three years, or that’s how much longer the 28-year-old has left on his current contract.

What we have to remember is that Nazem Kadri isn’t coming from just any old team. He’s coming from an Original 6 team, the Toronto Maple Leafs. He’s coming from a Canadian team, and one that poses itself as the capital of hockey.

Torontonians take hockey about as seriously as Texans take football — which is even more seriously than Coloradans take Denver Broncos football. In Toronto, it’s all about the Leafs. Their media is brutal, and their fanbase almost moreso.

What’s more, despite his Lebanese heritage, Kadri was born and raised in Ontario, of which Toronto is the capital. In other words, he’s pert near a local boy in those parts. And surely he would see himself as playing for his childhood team as much as John Tavares ever did.

Until now. Now, he’s living in the western city of Denver and playing for a team that not only dates back only to the 1970s but which was even moved from a Canadian city.  Vast difference from what he was used to in Toronto.

Not only that, he didn’t get traded to the Denver Broncos because, you know, he doesn’t play football. He got traded to one of seven professional sports teams in Colorado, and one that wavers between two and four on the list of importance in town.

Now, to be fair, Nazem Kadri hasn’t shown any signs of regret. He did make a proper goodbye to the only team he had ever known:

However, he states outright in his goodbye to Toronto that he has a new team now.

Well, yesterday on Media Day for Colorado, Kadri said all the right things. He jumped in with both feet as a Colorado Avalanche player. Here’s the most-repeated quote from his interview:

“This is my family now, these are the guys I’m going to do everything for now, this is the team I’m going to do everything for now.”

Like I said, the right things came out of his mouth.

However, after reading that quote, I looked at Kadri’s media shots for the team:

It just seems a little odd to see him in burgundy and blue. He doesn’t wear it poorly, or with disdain. However, it’s just so strange to see a player go from wearing Original 6 colors to our beautiful but decidedly more modern apparel.

And then I watched this video:

Now, the Colorado Avalanche social media team is the best in sports, bar none. They do an incredible job of creating quality content that both covers the serious side of hockey as well as the individual natures of the players. They took what teams like the LA Kings started and maximized it to the Nth power.

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Well, after watching this video and all of the amazing shenanigans that our team put out on social media today, I popped over to the Toronto Maple Leafs Twitter to see what kind of content they had up.

They had one post directly related to media day and four informative posts.

The Colorado Avalanche had 44 Media Day posts and an additional six related to a friendly ping pong match our mascot held.

Forty. Four. Posts. Of shenanigans like stuffing marshmallows into your face and trying to put on sunglasses with casts making your arms straight.

It was something I’ve been pondering since Nazem Kadri got traded here. I wonder if he looked out at the reporters during his presser and saw maybe one-third of the press. And then he went through the stations of Media Day and underwent about 10 times the shenanigans.

I wonder if it dawns on him that he’s on a team that has to sell itself to a sports-saturated market. And that if he makes big mistakes, he’s not going to get skewered for it.

I wonder if it was a disappointment or a relief.

I’d like to think it was a relief. I’d like to think he realizes he’ll be accepted for who he is here. He won’t have the pressure put on him here that he did in hockey-centric Toronto. And our media won’t be anywhere near as invasive as they are there.

I think ultimately Nazem Kadri is going to fit in very well with the Colorado Avalanche. He did look a little confused about shoving marshmallows into his mouth. However, look at this smile:

Yes, I think Kadri really is going to find his home with the Colorado Avalanche.