What happened to our rivalry with the Avs?

[Zetter is Better 0]

The Wings/Avs Rivalry ended because:

1) Lemiuex left Colorado

2) McCarty couldn`t fight and left the Wings

3) A pansy named Roy retired

4) NEITHER team has any fighters anymore

5) AVS Suck and we beat them all the time

6) The rivalry had to end sometime otherwise it would have got......

And that should have about summed it up

[skacore 2]

A. Wah never landed a clear shot (see Vernon's first LEFT vs. Roy) EDIT: LEFT from RIGHT

B. Ozzie landed on top

C. Shouldn't have been that close. Roy is 6 inches taller and 40 lbs heavier. Ties go to the smaller. (see Domi v. Probert)

D. Roy has much more practice than Ozzie, what with his wife and all.

yea you show no bias at all.. first off I hate Roy, but he beat Osgood

A. he landed a couple rights flush

B. lol

C. lol k

D. k

[Vincanni 1]

I hate Roy more than just about any retired player who's name doesn't rhyme with Maud Remew but I have to give him the edge in the Osgood fight. Defintely ran out of steam at the end but was the agressor through out the majority of the fight, granted Haynes made it sound like Stu Grimson's Reid Simpson fight, yet it's the only audio I ever freakin' hear when I see it.

D. Roy has much more practice than Ozzie, what with his wife and all.

Ouch, that's a low blow... Good job Don't forget electrical appliances, doors, and apparently junior hockey team owner's as well.

P.S. 2 points if anyone can get me more info on a Wah story I heard awhile back about him punching a fellow player in the face for accidentily hitting him in a soft spot with a slap shot during practice.

[haroldsnepsts 4,826]

The Avs rivalry died because the new schedule was so effective in creating new rivalries with teams by playing them every freaking day of the season, there just wasn't any time left to hate Colorado.

There's that intense rivalry with the Blue Jackets, and the Blues, and the blackhawks...

Okay, my non-smartass answer is that a big part of the rivalry was that both teams were on a collision course in the playoffs for several years in a row. If Colorado wanted to get to the Cup, they had to go through Detroit. If Detroit wanted the Cup, they had to go through Colorado.

Obviously there was the Turtle incident. But I think what really kept the rivalry going was playing each other under intense playoff conditions several times in a row.

That's the real way rivalries are born. You can't just play a team a million times and expect that to develop. they have to be standing between you and the Stanley Cup.

[OsGOD 3]

Europeans cant fight ?

Tell that to Mats Sundin , Tomas Holmstrom , and Peter Forsberg , hey , get Zetterberg mad enough and I bet he'd drop the gloves

forgot someone else:

Lilja?

[Vincanni 1]

Speaking of "soft euro's who "never fight" does the name Krzysztof Oliwa ring any bells?

[Wings_Dynasty 267]

yea you show no bias at all.. first off I hate Roy, but he beat Osgood

A. he landed a couple rights flush

B. lol

C. lol k

D. k

Absolutely I have bias.

I forgot two

E. In a post game interview, Osgood verbally pummeled Wah for being "a lot weaker than Vernie said he was."

F. Ozzie won the Cup that season.

Fight over. Ozzie wins.

[SouthernWingsFan 854]

in the late 1990's and 2000's the aves and wings rivalry was amongst the best in hockey at the time, so many fights and even a few ones with the goalies(inc roy smoking osgood) is it dead now because we have no fighters and all of detroits players are europeans who cant fight? i think a laraque in detroit(possibly bootland) would spice things up to get the heat on again

So all Europeans don't fight, but North Americans do?

I'm glad my 5'7", 145 lb. frame is intimating to somebody like Mattias Norstrom, cause I could clearly kick his a**.....or sometthing....

Anyways, the rivalry is dead, neither team really has any fighters, not just the Wings, and getting somebody like Laraque isn't going to spice the rivalry up. It's going to take another incident like the Draper-Lemieux incident (something I am not advocating for on either side).

[wings4thecup06 504]

So all Europeans don't fight, but North Americans do?

I'm glad my 5'7", 145 lb. frame is intimating to somebody like Mattias Norstrom, cause I could clearly kick his a**.....or sometthing....

Anyways, the rivalry is dead, neither team really has any fighters, not just the Wings, and getting somebody like Laraque isn't going to spice the rivalry up. It's going to take another incident like the Draper-Lemieux incident (something I am not advocating for on either side).

Yea I thnk it'll have to be another draper/lemieux and then revenge by maccarty that'll restart something. However, with the way our team is built these days i don't see it happening in the near future. Still i think it's about time we found a new rival, cause I'm quite happy with the way the Colorado rivalry ended really which it effectively did in 2002. To give it a rebirth would be a little weird, seeing that Joe Sakic is the only guy left from the 1997 avs team and draper, homer, lidstrom, maltby and ozzy are the only wings left.

[skacore 2]

Absolutely I have bias.

I forgot two

E. In a post game interview, Osgood verbally pummeled Wah for being "a lot weaker than Vernie said he was."

F. Ozzie won the Cup that season.

Fight over. Ozzie wins.

soft argument but ok lol

[Guest LivingtheDream]

I was the one who tried to rip into the Avs fan by telling him the rivalry was over nd that Detroit had won it, but I have a better quote! This is from the book, "Blood Feud" written by a Denver sports writer, Adrian Dater who happens to loathe homers:

"The end of the epic Detroit-Colorado rivalry should have been a quadruple-overtime thriller, if any sense of history had been followed. It should have come down to just a few players from each side remaining on the bench, the others gone from attrition. There should have been trash talk and face washes and brutal body checks and blood on the ice. It was none of that.

Instead it was one team, the Avalanche, that went out with a whimper. On a warm Friday night, May 31, the Red Wings beat Colorado 7-0-a night forever to be known in Denver as the Motown Meltdown."

That about sums it up. Roy getting shelled for 6 goals in one and a half periods as the Wings won game 7 of the conference finals and went on to win the Cup in 5. Perhaps all resulting from Roy's supreme arrogance in game 6 with the famous statue of liberty bumble. Sure it was the best ever hockey of the last 15 years, but in the end Roy went down in flames. A great goalie, sure, maybe the best ever, but a 100% ass of a man whose arrogance lost it all in the final battle.

[Hockeytown Red Wings 245]

Yeah, on the Avs boards I've read a lot of people saying Game 7 was the end...they still havent gotten over 7-0/

[Griffin 0]

ya after roy left, the aves basically fizzled

[Barrie 900]

The Wings/Avs Rivalry ended because:

5) AVS Suck and we beat them all the time

6) The rivalry had to end sometime otherwise it would have got......

I love the Wings, but I have to disagree with #5. The Avs beat us 3 times in the playoffs, we beat them only twice.

It was a back and forth rivarly. The upperhand changed 4 times.

We eventually won it with the 7-0 win in Game 7 of the 2002 WCF. It ended there.

[Vincanni 1]

I love the Wings, but I have to disagree with #5. The Avs beat us 3 times in the playoffs, we beat them only twice.

It was a back and forth rivarly. The upperhand changed 4 times.

We eventually won it with the 7-0 win in Game 7 of the 2002 WCF. It ended there.

They actually have a slightly better playoff record than we do but the point I feel that was meant to be made is that in the past few years they've been helpless to stop us. We beat them 6 games in a row before they barely edged us with 'Rebound' in net while playing on a back to back night at the Pepsi Center when we were down a d-man!

Not sure if it's some inauspicious mystique Joe Q carries with him or if they just kind of suck but the Avs can't really compete with the Wings anymore.

[Barrie 900]

They actually have a slightly better playoff record than we do but the point I feel that was meant to be made is that in the past few years they've been helpless to stop us. We beat them 6 games in a row before they barely edged us with 'Rebound' in net while playing on a back to back night at the Pepsi Center when we were down a d-man!

Not sure if it's some inauspicious mystique Joe Q carries with him or if they just kind of suck but the Avs can't really compete with the Wings anymore.

Ok I see what he's saying now.

[Sting 11 0]

In my opinion, the rivalry died when Roy retired. With him, Foote, Shanahan, Deadmarsh, McCarty and all the rest of the combatants gone, it isn't capable of being the same.

[Kp-Wings 3]

Speaking of "soft euro's who "never fight" does the name Krzysztof Oliwa ring any bells?

The Polish Hammer!

As far as the Wings-Av's rivalry goes, it did go out the door in that Game 7. The games against the Av's after that weren't as noticably good, even in the season to follow. On a side note though, It didn't destroy the Av's as a team, considering they took the Western Conference the next year, and half of their players won an award in some form or another. What ruined the Av's was blowing a 3-1 series lead against the Minnesota Wild in the 2002-2003 playoffs and getting sent packing in the first round. Ever since then was when it really went downhill for them.

One of the factors in the Wings-Av's rivalry were the players who started the whole thing. On the Wings you had McCarty, Vernon, Shanahan, Konstantinov, Kocur, etc. The Av's had Lemieux, Roy, Forsberg, Foote, Deadmarsh, etc. These guys are all either retired or playing for different teams. Once you take out this group, there's really no rivalry left. Who on the Av's would really start it up again? Brad May? Ossi Vanannen? No, not really. And who on the current Red Wings team would fight back? Lilja? Samulesson? Probably not. So you can really see the consensus for why the rivalry is dead. If a new generation of players comes to both respected sides, there's a cheapshot or two, and these two teams meet in the playoffs, than maybe the rivalry could start up again. But I just don't see that happening in the near future.

[TheLegend19 1]

the lockout, salary cap, new schedule, and new NHL basically killed any non-division rivalries

The league has gotten really good at that.