Colorado Avalanche: The Real Ghost, Darius Kasparaitis

The Colorado Avalanche once had Darius “Kaspar the Unfriendly Ghost” Kasparaitis on their team for a touch of toughness.

The Colorado Avalanche do not have a ghost on their team right now, despite the snarky comment an Avs blogger tweeted a while back. However, they did at one time, and for a very brief period.

For 11 regular seasons and 21 playoff games, the Avalanche employed a player named Darius Kasparaitis. The Lithuanian went by the nickname “Kaspar,”as in Caspar the Friendly Ghost. And he was something of a ghost for the team.

Kaspar was never going to be a big scorer for the Avalanche. His career-best for points was with the Pittsburgh Penguins. He recorded 19 points. Points, not goals. He had three of those and 16 assists. That was a couple years before the Avs traded for him at the trade deadline.

Colorado traded Rick Berry and Ville Nieminen for Darius Kasparaitis on March 19, 2002. They were making a drive to the playoffs. As the current Stanley Cup champions, they had every reason to believe they were making a full Cup run.

And they traded for Kaspar. Why? Like I said, it wasn’t for the scoring. It was for the grit. He earned over 100 penalty minutes seven seasons in his career — six of them before the Avalanche traded for him. While not the wild 1990s, the early 2000s were still part of the clutch-and-grab era. A team expecting to make a Cup run needed a menace.

Kaspar was that. He was not a fun player to play against. He could get under your skin like no one’s business. And the stout Lithuanian wasn’t afraid to hit. In his playing days, he packed 215 pounds on a 5-foot-11 frame. You just looked at him and thought he was a tank.

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He moved like a tank — slow and aggressively. I don’t know if the team got what they bargained for in Kaspar, but they certainly got the player advertised. In his 11 regular season games, he earned no points. And he earned 19 penalty minutes.

Kaspar did a little better in the playoffs. In his 21 games with Colorado, he managed three assists. And he earned 18 penalty minutes.

Many hockey fans don’t like this stat, =/-, but it’s what we have for the early 2000s. With Colorado, he was +1 in the regular season. In the playoffs, which is what the Avs got him for, he was +10. I wish I could see his Corsi stats, but that suggests to me he brought value to the ice.

Indeed, 12 of those 18 penalty minutes came against the rival Detroit Red Wings. He was averaging over 20 minutes of ice time in the playoffs — Colorado wanted him ticking other teams off.

Alas, he didn’t tick players off all the way to the Cup finals. And he didn’t add enough value to earn a contract from the team.

light. Related Story. Kavalenko, the Forgotten Russian Av

So, from March 21 to May 31, 2002, the Colorado Avalanche employed Kaspar the Unfriendly Ghost, the only time they’ve had a ghost on this team.

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