It Might Be a Quick Fall From Mountaintop for Avalanche

The bill seems to finally have come due.

On the wall near the Colorado Avalanche’s dressing room are photos of Patrick Roy and Ray Bourque. Wandering around inside is Rob Blake, with a creaky back and 35-year-old legs.

These are exhibits, relics really, from another time in Denver, where with a checkbook and a few prospects, all problems could be solved.

The Avalanche won two Stanley Cup championships and reached the Western Conference finals four other times in the last nine seasons. The team has a .625 winning percentage, second only to the Detroit Red Wings in the NHL, in that time.

But whereas the Red Wings have breezed blue line to blue line into the NHL’s new financial era, the Avalanche has stumbled over the bottom line.

That was as obvious as a Blake check -- and just as loud -- last week when it was revealed that General Manager Pierre Lacroix had renounced 2005-06 options on headliners Blake and Joe Sakic. By doing so, the Avalanche saved $700,000 on the salary cap this season, as team payroll numbers are based on the combined average of a player’s length of contract.

The Avalanche toted a bloated $62-million payroll through the 2003-04 season and was teetering on the brink, trying to stay under the new $39-million salary cap. The answer to getting below the cap was to shed options that would have paid Sakic $7.2 million and Blake $6.8 million next season, which got the Avalanche about $200,000 under $39 million.

“I’m OK with what they did,” was all Blake would say about the move last week.

How OK Avalanche fans will be with it remains to be seen. Sakic and Blake are marquee names in Denver, where the team has sold out 444 consecutive games. But there were large blocks of empty seats for a game against the Kings last Wednesday.

The Avalanche seems all too mortal in the new NHL. Goaltender David Aebischer has struggled and the team blew three-goal leads in losses twice in one week. The type of players who could help slow such a slide are in Philadelphia (Peter Forsberg), Columbus (Adam Foote), Nashville (Paul Kariya) and Anaheim (Teemu Selanne). All four found greener pastures as free agents last summer.

Sakic and Blake can bolt next summer. The Avalanche has the rights to re-sign each, but chances are Sakic and Blake can earn bigger paychecks elsewhere.

All that seems to remain of the Avalanche’s old ways of conducting business is the organization’s attitude. In the new “media-friendly” NHL, Lacroix did not respond to repeated telephone calls.

That left Blake as about the only one ready to defend the organization.

“There are restrictions now that we haven’t had in the past,” Blake said. “We were able to go out and pick up players in free agency and do different things. Now, with the restrictions, you can’t do that. But as far as being competitive and as far as our goal to win the Stanley Cup, that’s always going to be the same in this room.”

In the room, sure. In the reality of the new NHL, well that doesn’t look so promising.

The five free agents brought in over the summer will cost the Avalanche about $5.1 million -- Forsberg signed for $5.7 million with Philadelphia. That group is a bit suspect. Forward Pierre Turgeon has seen better -- and faster -- days, and defenseman Patrice Brisebois’ defensive skills earned him the nickname “Breeze By” in Montreal.

“[Lacroix] and management have always done a good job of getting things done in the past,” Blake said. “I’m sure they will get it done again.”

Problems in the past were fixed by a phone call, some draft picks and a couple of prospects. The Avalanche has little room under the salary cap, so no blockbuster is coming, a la Roy in 1995.

As for being able to build from within, the Blake deal cost the Avalanche two first-round picks in 2001 and the Bourque deal one in 2000. The Avalanche has had only two first-round picks in the last five years. Both trades also eroded the organization’s depth, as did Lacroix’s habit of trading players who held out during contract negotiations.

Dissed by Dish

Many hockey fans may have a new definition for OLN: Only Local Networks.

That is the only place those who subscribe to the Dish Network will see hockey, at least in the near future. The second-largest satellite provider in the United States, with about 12 million subscribers, dropped OLN from its system last week over a dispute with Comcast Corp., which owns OLN.

Dish Network officials said that OLN did not show games on Oct. 10-11, as advertised and provided no advance notice.

Comcast officials said that the channel must be seen by 40% of a cable or satellite TV system’s subscribers and that the Dish Network had not complied.

“We are confident that Comcast will successfully resolve any OLN distribution issues,” NHL spokesman Frank Brown said.

A resolution may indeed be coming, but for the NHL it’s just another troublesome marker on hockey’s road back from lockout oblivion.

Closer to the NHL offices, the New York Islanders failed to sell out a game with the New York Rangers last Thursday, the first time that has happened in cozy, 16,234-seat Nassau Coliseum since April 4, 1998.

Chris Botta, vice president of communications for the Islanders, posted a letter on the team’s website, ripping the New York Times and the Daily News for not covering the Islanders regularly, suggesting fans buy Newsday and the New York Post instead.

McFleury?

Into the land that has known real trouble skates Theo Fleury.

The latest turn in Fleury’s troubled hockey career has taken him to Northern Ireland, where he plays for the Belfast Giants in the British Elite League. In the Giants’ 11-2 victory over the Edinburgh Capitals on Oct. 15, Fleury had three goals, four assists and two fights. A double Gordie Howe hat trick?

“I have come over here to play hockey and win,” the 37-year-old Fleury said in the Toronto Star. “If people want to tangle, I will tangle with them.”

This is a fresh start, and probably the last hurrah, for Fleury, who has battled substance-abuse problems that led to the demise of his NHL career.

“I am here in Belfast ... determined to make a fresh start, doing something unique in my life that I can look back at with pride,” Fleury said in the Star.