And four games later, the Avs advance to Round 2. Now, they can go home, rest up, and get ready to face off against the winner of the Blues vs. Wild series winner.
Avs sweep Nashville.
There is a lot to digest from this round, but one blast from the past nagged me the whole series, short as it may have been. Of course, that is Matt Duchene.
Once upon a time, Matt Duchene was the Colorado Avalanche sweetheart. He was young, talented, and fast. When the Avs didn’t have anything going, Duchene was a bright beacon of hope. Flash forward to today, Duchene is greeted with sneers rather than cheers.
The Avalanche drafted Duchene in 2009 in the first round (going third overall). Young Matty grew up in Haliburton, Ontario, and was an Avs fan. He idolized Roy and even wanted to be a goaltender, but his father, a former tender, encouraged him to play as a forward. He used to draw the Avalanche logo as a kid on his schoolbooks, and so when his childhood team drafted him, it was a dream come true. Literally. In his rookie year, he lived in Foote’s basement. I’d still live in Foote’s basement today.
As Avs fans, hearing that your new rookie is also a diehard Avs fan felt like a match made in heaven.
However, like the economy, 2009 was not a great time for Avs. Duchene entered the Avalanche during one of the more dire situations the franchise has faced. Under the tutelage of Joe Sacco, the Avs were not a great team. There is no denying it. They were bad. He butted heads with his old-school style coach as a young and talented player. He was not quiet about his dissatisfaction with his coach, and after Sacco’s departure in 2013, he spoke publically about his displeasure.
When Patrick Roy entered as head coach in 2013, it felt like a new era for the Avs. And it was, for a time. Roy brought the defunct young team to life with his fiery persona. Duchene had to hold back his laugh in the season's first game when Roy slammed his fists to the glass against the Wild coach, Boudreau. He grew up worshiping Roy, and there he was, sitting on his bench, witnessing what Roy did best: cause havoc.
That same year, a new young face appeared on the Avs bench: Nathan MacKinnon. Duchene was no longer the young, talented new guy. After the first heated season under Roy, where the Avs made the playoffs, the team failed to do so in their next two seasons—prompting Roy to walk away just before the start of the season in 2016.
Enter Jared Bednar, who took the reins in a tumultuous time with a team full of young talent. It was not a shock when the Avs had their worst season with 48 points. The trade rumors began to circulate about Duchene. By Christmas of 2016, Duchene asked General Manager, Joe Sakic, for a trade.
It took some time, but on November 5, 2017, after eight years as an Av, Duchene was traded 1:39 seconds into a game against the New York Islanders. I happened to be at the game when I saw Duchene head to the locker room. At the time, I thought he might have been injured, but it turned out he had been involved in a three-team trade to Ottawa Senators. In the trade, the Avs acquired Samuel Girard from Nashville. The Senators had come off of a great season, nearly making it to the Stanley Cup Finals in 2017, and Duchene expressed his desire to play for a playoff team. He clearly did not think that the Avs were playoff material.
The joke is, that year, the Senators didn’t make the playoffs, they were the second-worst team in the league, and the Avs clinched a playoff spot. After the trade, the Avs lost the two overseas games in Sweden to Ottawa, but come January, they went on a ten-game winning streak, outscoring their opponents 41-16. Without Duchene, the Avs had found their chemistry.
Players like Johnson and Landeskog didn’t publically condemn Duchene, but there was a lot of language about players who wanted to be “here.” Duchene had made it clear he did not want to be in Colorado, and the scoreboard proved that we had become a better team without him.
We will never know what happened inside the locker room, but from an outsider's perspective, it looked like Duchene brought toxic energy to the club. When one of your best players doesn’t even want to play for the team anymore, what does that do for morale? The Avs had the talent; it just hadn’t been developed yet. That seemed to take too much time for a player like Duchene, who thought he deserved to be on a playoff team, now.
He may have found the playoff team he thought he deserved when he was traded to Nashville in 2019. But he will be on the golf course while the Avs are on the ice continuing their playoff drive this year because players like MacKinnon, Landeskog, and Johnson wanted to be in Colorado and believed in their team.
At 31, Duchene had a career-high regular season with 86 points (43G, 43A) and scored three of Nashville’s nine goals in the series, one goal in the middle of a “Duchene Sucks” chant at Ball Arena. There is no denying that Duchene is a great player and certainly showed Avs fans that the taunting does not bother him. It fueled him. I suggest not starting that chant again. However, my preference would be a collective, short, but guttural “douuuuuche” when he has the puck.
Duchene gave a lot to this club for a long time, and it may have been a case of bad timing. I didn’t want to watch some of those Sacco-era games, let alone be in the locker room. He had had enough bullshit. But we all had, the only difference being some players believed in Joe Sakic’s strategy to craft the team to its potential.
As this fated fairy tale of Matt Duchene comes to an end, the lesson is that patience is a virtue. And while Duchene no longer ranks as a former Av favorite, he still was an Av, and once and Av, always an Av. If anything, we should thank him. The Avs have made the playoffs every year without him.
Now, who cares about Duchene anymore?
On to Round 2.