2000-01Avs deserve to be among top 20 in league lore

The 1969-70 Boston Bruins? What they’re most remembered for is captured in a single photograph (or the equivalent film snippet), showing Bobby Orr leaping through the air after scoring the Stanley Cup-winning goal in Game 4 of the Finals against St. Louis.

The 2000-01 Colorado Avalanche? It’s the sequence of captain Joe Sakic handing off the Stanley Cup to Ray Bourque, whose two decades of anticipation show on his face as— with Denver Post photographer John Leyba and others shooting away— he holds and thrusts it aloft.

That and the homage to teams’ dynastic runs are what struck me when looking over the list of the single-season “Top 20 Greatest NHL Teams” selected in fan voting in conjunction with the league’s 100th anniversary. It’s a marketing contrivance, yet fun. The first round cut the field from the NHL’S 96

Stanley Cup champiTop 20 onship teams to 50, the second round got greatest it down to 20 and the subsequent voting NHL teams eventually will select the “Greatest NHL

1969-70 Boston Bruins team.”

1975-76 Montreal Canadiens In those two cases,

1976-77 Montreal Canadiens an iconic, summing

1977-78 Montreal Canadiens it-up moment is so

1979-80 New York Islanders memorable and pow

1981-82 New York Islanders erful.

1982-83 New York Islanders The final 20 is a

1983-84 Edmonton Oilers modern-era list. That

Bruins team is the

1984-85 Edmonton Oilers

farthest back, from

1986-87 Edmonton Oilers

the third season of

1987-88 Edmonton Oilers the post-“original

1988-89 Calgary Flames Six” era. That shut

1990-91 Pittsburgh Penguins out any teams from

1991-92 Pittsburgh Penguins the six-team league,

1993-94 New York Rangers or even the earlier

1997-98 Detroit Red Wings seasons when the

2000-01 Colorado Avalanche NHL included as

2001-02 Detroit Red Wings many as 10 franchis

es (that’s why “Origi

2009-10 Chicago Blackhawks

nal Six” calls for quo

2015-16 Pittsburgh Penguins tation marks).

The exclusions of the 1951-52 Redwings, with Gordie Howe and Ted Lindsay, and the 1955-56 Canadiens, with Jean Beliveau and Rocket Richard, are like leaving the 1927 Yankees off a list of greatestworld Series champions, whether out of ignorance or dismissal of the era because its best player, Babe Ruth, was a fat slob. But that doesn’t mean the voting is “wrong,” and in this 140-character, excitement-over-whoskated-on-the-second-line-at-practice-this-morning era, homage to a hockey team from 47 years ago even is a bit surprising.

The list included four Oilers teams, plus three apiece from the Canadiens and Islanders in spans brief enough to be considered dynastic runs. The Penguins’ three teams among the 20 came with a 13-year gap between the second and third.

The inclusion of the Bobhartley-coached 2000-01 Avalanche and Redwings (2001-02) from consecutive seasons is most interesting and provocative here. The 1997-98 Redwings also are on the list.

It all triggers thoughts of what might have been. What if the Avalanche had won at least one more championship in its first decade in Denver? Think of the cast, which evolved but featured Patrick Roy, Sakic, Peter Forsberg, Milan Hejduk, Chris Drury, Alex Tanguay, Adam Foote, Rob Blake, Sandis Ozolinsh, Adam Deadmarsh, Claude Lemieux, Valeri Kamensky and more.

I’m not saying the 1995-96 team would have made the list as a case of recognizing dominance over a period of time. I’m thinking more of the three times the Avalanche lost in thewestern Conference finals in seven games— against the Dallas Stars in 1999 and 2000, and the Redwings in 2002. In 1999 and 2002, the Avalanche let 3-2 series leads get away. Granted, all three of those Game 7s were on the road, but those teams were capable of rising to the challenge … but didn’t. The blinkered front-office perception that the Avalanche, under Hartley, didn’t take full advantage of that talent it had in that window, greatly contributed to his ridiculously premature firing during the 2002-03 season. The truth is, it was a glorious era, especially viewed in the context of the franchise’s current struggles. It’s just that it could have been better.

The 2000-01 Avalanche didn’t have to go through the Redwings because the Kings shocked Detroit in the first round. But after Forsberg suffered a ruptured spleen and wasn’t available beyond thewestern Conference semifinals win over the Kings, Colorado came back from a 3-2 series deficit in the Finals against the Devils. Game 6 in New Jersey was one of Roy’s defining nights, when he kept the outplayed Avalanche in it early. Then Tanguay’s twogoal Game 7 at the Pepsi Center gave him a permanent spot of honor in Avalanche lore.

It was the pre-salary cap era, and keeping that kind of a roster together turned out to be problematic, leading to Foote’s and Forsberg’s departures after the 2004-05 dark season. A case can be made that the Avalanche winning Denver’s first majorleague championship in 1996 was a thrill that can’t be duplicated, but the 2001 team was better, entrenched in Denver by then and more a part of Col

orado’s sporting landscape.

Terry Frei: tfrei@denverpost.com or @Tfrei