Colorado Avalanche fans would love to see the Dallas Stars lose to the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Stanley Cup Finals.
The Colorado Avalanche have been out of the playoffs for an entire series, and that still stinks. None of us thought that was the result we deserved, and it certainly wasn’t the one we wanted. But there we are.
Meanwhile, we now know who will play in this historic COVID Stanley Cup. The Dallas Stars beat the Vegas Golden Knights for the first position in the Cup Finals. The Tampa Bay Lightning have now beaten the New York Islanders for that second position.
The Stars are, of course, the team that beat the Avalanche. Beat them literally — the Avs were mostly healthy going into the series and started dropping players just when faced with the dirty Stars.
I didn’t watch the Vegas series because I was too salty, but I’m going to guess something similar happened there. In any case, it’s the Stars against the Lightning.
I can’t speak for all Avs fans, but a lot seem to be coming in on the Bolts side for Finals champion. Many wanted former Avs goalie Semyon Varlamov to make good with the New York Islanders, but he’s the one who let in the series-winning goal in overtime.
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Nonetheless, I think most Avalanche fans don’t have enough reason to hate Tampa — not the way we hate Dallas. Not sure why? See above about injuries. Sure, the first injury, to Matt Calvert, and the last injury, to captain Gabriel Landeskog, were by friendly fire. All the other in between were at the hands — or in Erik Johnson‘s case, knee — of Dallas players.
And we just loathe Dallas. Maybe not quite as much as we hate the Minnesota Wild — not yet anyway — but we hate the Stars.
Some fans hold that you want the team that beat you to be the one that goes on to win the Stanley Cup. After all, there’s no shame in losing to the eventual Cup winners.
Horse feathers. No one who watched this Colorado Avalanche team would find any reason to feel ashamed anyway. The Avalanche are a deep and talented team, but even they can’t see up to 25% of their main roster go down in injury and flourish. That happened in the regular season.
In the second-round series, Colorado lost seven players, including both goalies and their captain. If you take out Conor Timmins, who went in for Johnson, that’s 27% of the roster they started and finished round one with — their preferred roster, in other words. The injury situation got so dire, they had to call in a spare goalie.
And they still took Dallas to Game 7 overtime. So, no, Avalanche fans aren’t going to be ashamed of our team regardless. So, for those of us who are so inclined, we can indulge in a little pettiness.
I saw an Avs fan on Twitter say he hoped the Dallas Stars lost in Game 7 overtime so that Joe Pavelski will have lost out on a Stanley Cup by virtue of a single goal.
That’s cold. AndI’m hoping for the same thing. And some Jame Benn tears (see above about the knee) wouldn’t make me feel sympathetic either.
The action starts on Saturday at 5:30 PM MDT. The Tampa Bay Lightning will be going to Edmonton to face the Stars, though the Bolts have official home ice advantage.