Colorado Avalanche: Joe Sakic Reminisces about his 2 Cup Teams

Colorado Avalanche GM and Hall of Famer Joe Sakic talked about the two Stanley Cup teams he captained.

Colorado Avalanche legend Joe Sakic spoke with the Sports Social, a weekday program that’s been running from 11-1. Naturally, he talked about the current situation with the hockey hiatus.

Toward the end of the interview, though, Kyle Keefe asked Sakic a question that he also asked Stephane Yelle and Milan Hejduk — if the 1996 Stanley Cup team faced off with the 2001 Stanley Cup team, who would win in a single game?

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Sakic, of course, captained both of those teams.

His answer was that the 1996 team would win because they had “more firepower.” He also thought that they seemed to be a little bit deeper through that lineup.

He added:

“Both teams were incredibly deep teams, but I think the ’96 team in the playoffs was healthier than the ’01 team… One was probably a little more defensive, and the ’96 team had a little more firepower.”

Sakic said it twice — the firepower — so let’s look at who the forwards were on the team for the Stanley Cup Finals:

• Joe Sakic
• Peter Forsberg
• Mike Ricci
• Adam Deadmarsh
• Mike Keane
• Valeri Kamensky
• Sylvain Lefebvre
• Stephane Yelle
• Rene Corbet
• Dave Hannan
• Warren Rychel
• Scott Young

Some of those names are blast-from-the-past kind of players, but, yeah, that’s some firepower.

It’s also interesting that he made the comment about the 2001 team being more defensive — this was a team that had the great defensemen Rob Blake and Ray Bourque on the roster. So, maybe it’s not so unusual for them to have been more on the defense-minded side.

Joe Sakic brought up another point about the 1996 team:

“Everybody else seemed to be a little bit younger and more in their prime.”

Now, that’s very interesting because Adam Foote once made a similar comment. In fact, Foote specifically referenced that  Patrick Roy was younger at the time.

Joe Sakic was 27 in 1996 and 32 in 2001. Patrick Roy was 30 in 1995 and 35 in 2001. Adam Foote was 25 and 30 respectively.

Wow, I didn’t realize Roy was 35 for that last Cup.

Anyway, Sakic said the two teams had something very important in common — the big personalities in the dressing room:

“You can’t win unless you have those personalities, that team chemistry, that bond. Both teams in the dressing room, everybody just loved each other. And you wanted to compete for each other. The characters on both clubs were unbelievable. We could tell stories, but we won’t.”

Oh, man, I want to hear some of those stories.

I found that characterization fascinating because I’ve said the same thing — teams win Stanley Cups with killer goal tending and team chemistry.

In any case, Joe Sakic said as much as he’d like to see the two Colorado Avalanche teams compete against each other, it doesn’t matter — he is happy and proud to have been a part of both.

I’ve got to say, I’ve always favored that 1996 Cup win, too. I hope one day soon we’re going to be arguing if our current Cup team could beat one of them.