The Colorado Avalanche have a long history of being both a highly-skilled and highly-physical team. You only have to say the name “Claude Lemieux” to see the truth in that statement.
I grew up, hockey-wise, in the 1990s. That was the renowned clutch-and-grab era. As color announcer Peter McNab likes to point out, those were the days you could hook onto a player’s midsection and water ski down the ice without getting called.
Those were also the days when you saw the big bench-clearing brawls. You saw goalie fights. And yet you also saw the beauty of plays from the great players such as Joe Sakic and Peter Forsberg and, of course, the Great One himself, Wayne Gretzky.