During the NHL lockout of 2004-05, 7-year-old Troy Terry shot pucks at Joe Sakic, the Avalanche center and team captain who also played goalie for kids in his driveway.
Fourteen years later, and standing outside of the visiting locker room at the Pepsi Center for the first time Friday, Terry vividly recalled why he became a hockey player, and why he prefers to don No. 19.
“He was kind of my first big role model,” Terry, the Anaheim Ducks rookie forward, said of Sakic, now the Avalanche’s general manager.
Terry’s tale is one of the finest home-grown Colorado hockey stories the state has ever seen.