Mile High Sticking
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Colorado Avalanche: Choose 3 Dinner Guests from Team History

ByNadia Archuleta|
DENVER, CO - MAY 28: Colorado Avalanche goalie Patrick Roy announces his retirement from the NHL after 18 seasons at the Pepsi Center May 28, 2003 in Denver, Colorado. Roy is the NHL's career leader with 551 victories and 1,029 games played, a three-time winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy and a four-time Stanley Cup champion. (Photo by Tim DeFrisco/Getty Images)
DENVER, CO - MAY 28: Colorado Avalanche goalie Patrick Roy announces his retirement from the NHL after 18 seasons at the Pepsi Center May 28, 2003 in Denver, Colorado. Roy is the NHL's career leader with 551 victories and 1,029 games played, a three-time winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy and a four-time Stanley Cup champion. (Photo by Tim DeFrisco/Getty Images)

The Colorado Avalanche have had some good personalities throughout the years. If you had to choose three to have over for dinner, who would they be?

The Colorado Avalanche have some interesting people in the lineup now and through their history. There have been some big personalities, some gentle giants, and those you would vote for if they ran for mayor.

How about if you were hosting a small dinner party? Let’s say you could pick two players and one coach through the team’s history. They were going to come to your home. As you serve them dinner, you get to pick their brains or just get to know them better.

The NHL came up with such an idea this morning for the whole NHL:

I’m going to keep this Avs-related, though.

Current Players

We have some great personalities on our team know. There are a couple eccentric sorts, like Ian Cole and Philipp Grubauer. Some sweethearts like Pavel Francouz, Cale Makar, and Ryan Graves. And we’ve got some jokesters — namely Erik Johnson and Nikita Zadorov.

How about if your goal is to get to know about hockey? Well, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone on the team that knows more about every aspect of the game, from training to nutrition to plays, than Nathan MacKinnon.

I’d have to say for me personally, it would come down to personality. Who would be fun to have around for an evening of dinner and drinks? The most obvious person is our extraordinarily charismatic captain, Gabriel Landeskog. There’s also the so-gregarious Tyson Jost.

Don’t discount bad boy Sam Girard. He’d probably be fun if you got a drink or two in him.

Former Players

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Now the list will get unwieldy. The Colorado Avalanche have been around for 25 years. That’s a lot of players.

The obvious choices are the superstars we’ve had in our history:

The amount of hockey knowledge in that group up there.

How about some of the big personalities? Adam Foote, Ville Nieminen, and Mike Ricci come to mind. You’ve also got your fan favorites in the likes of John-Michael Liles, Dan Hinote, and Rene Corbet. How about Uwe Krupp or Alex Tanguay, both of whom hold the distinction of scoring our Stanley Cup-winning goals.

Lots of people would think of inviting the Sheriff, Scott Parker.

Coach

And now our choices narrow down because there have only been seven coaches in Colorado Avalanche history:

Fun fact: Four of those coaches (Crawford, Quenneville, Roy, Bednar) are tied for number of games coached at 246.

I don’t think Sacco or Granato would make many people’s lists. I wonder how many Avs fans would be interested in Crawford. He did coach the first team to their Cup victory. But he’s also the coach who sent out Todd Bertuzzi to attack Steve Moore.

Final Consensus

I think I could base my dinner guests on a number of different factors. If I wanted to have an easy and fun time, I’d probably invite Gabriel Landeskog, Teemu Selanne and Bob Hartley. All three have pleasant personalities but would still be fun to be around.

To have a little more fun — like swing from the chandeliers fun? Maybe Erik Johnson, Ville Nieminen and Joel Quenneville.

If I wanted a spicy dinner party, I’d invite Nikita Zadorov, Patrick Roy as former player, and Jared Bednar as current coach. There could definitely be some awkward moments — spurred on by me, of course.

For pure hockey knowledge, you’d want Nathan MacKinnon, Patrick Roy as coach, and Joe Sakic. That’s also some major star power.

If I went purely by my favorites, I’d be sending invites to Tyson Jost, Patrick Roy as coach, and Rene Corbet. Yeah, that’s probably where I’d settle.

How about you, Colorado Avalanche fans? Who would you invite over as dinner guests?

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