Best Colorado Avalanche Stanley Cup Moments

The Colorado Avalanche beat the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 6 to win the Stanley Cup Finals and take home the trophy!

The Colorado Avalanche have won the Stanley Cup. THE COLORADO AVALANCHE WON THE STANLEY CUP!!!!!!!!

The Colorado Avalanche are the 2022 Stanley Cup champions, and, boy, it is never going to get old saying that. The last time they won the Cup we were all wearing Mom jeans and mullets. (Ok, Mark Rycroft is still wearing a mullet — until this victory!)

How are you feeling, Avs Nation, Avs fam? Are any of you feeling nostalgic for Stanley Cups past? Strangely, I’m not. Rather, I’m thinking of the last few playoffs. The victories, but more the frustrations. Gabriel Landeskog’s offside in Vegas keeps coming to mind. Oh, and it just doesn’t matter because the Colorado Avalanche won the Stanley Cup!

The game itself…  was nerve-wracking. There were times when I forgot to breathe! I was staring into my computer screen with my teeth clenched and no breath going in or out.

Fun fact: I’m currently in the Middle East, so I’ve started every game day at 4 am. This morning at 7am local time, I was dancing around like an overexcited puppy begging the time clock to tick down faster so the Colorado Avalanche could win the Stanley Cup! I was so excited I couldn’t even type to post that the Avs had won without hitting the send button so many times I nearly got put in Twitter and Facebook jail!

Does it normally take eons for the NHL to actually hand over the Stanley Cup? I loved seeing all the team celebrations, but it just seemed like another 21 years went by until Phil Pritchard came down the chute and the Cup got set up on the ice. And then that cringe-worth speech by Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly (Commissioner Gary Bettman has COVID) in which he went on and on praising the Tampa Bay Lightning! It’s like he already had it scripted…

Ah, never, mind, here are those seminal moments:

As you can see, Daly did finally get around to praising the actual Stanley Cup champions, the Colorado Avalanche!

The moment captain Gabriel Landeskog (by the way — what even happened in the last minute when they had to pull him up off the ice into the bench like a recalcitrant pup? That felt like a fever dream.) lifts the Stanley Cup is a frame of beauty. Sure, it’s because he’s our Avs captain, but the videographer also did a brilliant job framing him with the fireworks in the background.

There was some question about to whom he would hand it first. It was never a question in my mind, though. Of course he handed it to his BFF, a man who happens to be the longest-tenured current Avs player and the one who showed Landeskog the ropes when he first joined the team and eventually became captain. Defenseman Erik Johnson.

Here they are holding the Cup together:

Johnson then handed it off to Andrew Cogliano, which was pretty cool. It took a minute, but Nathan MacKinnon finally got his turn with the Cup.
Gratuitous video of Johnson and MacKinnon celebrating together:

If you need a little salt for your dinner, check out the Tampa fans in the mentions.

We can go on and on about how this all happened and about how Cale Makar is a superstud (unanimous Conn Smythe vote). However, I want to highlight two more moments just in this first rush.

One, Nazem Kadri. It would be enough of a fairy tale for a player to go down in the third round from a dirty hit from a known dirty player, have surgery on his thumb, be able to come back to play in the Finals, just to score the game-winning goal in Game 4! That really is a good story. However, when you think about his history, what he’s had to go through as one of the few Muslim, Middle Eastern player, one who suffered racism pretty openly in the second round. And you think about his own demons, getting suspended in the playoffs three different times!

Well, he was asked about the fans who stood with him (hint — that would be us here in Avs Nation), and his response was, “For everybody who thought I was a liability in the playoffs, you can kiss my *ss.”

Mashallah on the Cup win, Naz!

And now a little light note. You saw how carefully the Cup attendants brought that sacred trophy out onto the ice. If you look at the official Stanley Cup picture, though, you’ll notice a dent down at the bottom:

Nicolas Aube-Kubel, who was born the year the Colorado Avalanche brought the first-ever sports championship to Denver, TRIPPED WHILE CARRYING THE CUP!!!!

Just think — that’s going to be what Aube-Kubel is forever remembered for! Heckuva legacy, but we’re all sure he doesn’t mind.

One more time. Because I can. The Colorado Avalanche are the 2022 Stanley Cup champions!!!!