From the Quebec Nordiques to the Colorado Avalanche: The Full Story

A rebel with a two-game coach

A Quebec business group bought the rights to a proposed San Francisco WHA franchise for a reported C$215,000, and in 1972 the Nordiques were born. They hired the most famous name in the sport as their first coach: Maurice "Rocket" Richard. He lasted two games.

The team lasted a lot longer. The Nordiques played all seven seasons of the WHA, won the 1977 Avco World Trophy by beating Winnipeg in Game 7, and were one of four WHA survivors let into the NHL in 1979, along with Edmonton, Hartford and Winnipeg. That put them in the same league as the Montreal Canadiens, and that is where things got interesting.

Quebec City finds its team. Montreal finds a rival.

The Canadiens had the history, the banners and the big bilingual city. The Nordiques had the fleur-de-lis and a fan base that saw itself as the challenger. People who played in those games still describe them as more than hockey: big city against smaller city, rival media, even rival breweries. The two teams met eight times a season, and in the spring of 1984 it boiled over.

On April 20, Good Friday, Game 6 produced two mass brawls, ten ejections and 252 penalty minutes. Montreal won 5-3 and moved on. Quebec got its answer a year later and beat the Canadiens in seven. Across five playoff meetings, the Nordiques won two. Nobody in Quebec City let Montreal forget either one.

The Nordiques start building a monster

Quebec's first superstar arrived by pay phone. In August 1980, Peter Stastny was in Innsbruck, Austria, with his Czechoslovak team. He called the Nordiques from a public phone. Executive Marcel Aubut and scout Gilles Léger flew over, and after a game Peter and his brother Anton skipped the team bus and drove toward Vienna, with Peter's pregnant wife Darina in the car.

Peter scored 109 points as a rookie, the first NHL rookie to pass 100. On February 22, 1981, he and Anton each put up eight points in the same game against Washington. Michel Goulet, picked 20th overall in 1979, became the homegrown star, Dale Hunter brought the edge, and Quebec reached the conference final in 1982 and again in 1985.

Then it fell apart, and the fall built the next team

By 1989-90 the first great core was gone and the Nordiques went 12-61-7. Rock bottom paid out in draft picks: Mats Sundin first overall in 1989, Owen Nolan in 1990 and Eric Lindros in 1991.

Lindros refused to sign. He later said his issue was with owner Marcel Aubut, not with Quebec or French Canada. He sat out a season, and in 1992 the Nordiques traded him to Philadelphia for Peter Forsberg, Mike Ricci, Steve Duchesne, Ron Hextall, Kerry Huffman, Chris Simon, two first-round picks and US$15 million. They had drafted a player who never took a shift for them and built a whole new core out of it.

By 1994-95 it was working. Pierre Lacroix, a former player agent, was GM. Marc Crawford was behind the bench. Sakic and Forsberg led the team, Forsberg won the Calder Trophy, and the Nordiques went 30-13-5 and won their division.

Then Quebec lost them

In May 1995, COMSAT bought the team for a reported US$75 million and moved it to Denver. Quebec City was the NHL's smallest market. Le Colisée didn't have the luxury suites teams were starting to depend on. Salaries were climbing, Canadian clubs were paying players in U.S. dollars, and the new labor deal had no salary cap and no revenue sharing. Aubut wanted public money for a new arena, and the provincial government offered less.

There was no single villain, and "the fans stopped caring" is not what happened. The team that left had just won its division.

Quebec didn't lose a bad team. It lost a contender.

December 1995: Patrick Roy walks out on Montreal

The new Colorado Avalanche added Claude Lemieux three days before their first game and started 16-7-4. Then, on December 2, Montreal coach Mario Tremblay left Patrick Roy in net for nine goals in an 11-1 loss to Detroit. When Roy was finally pulled, he told Canadiens president Ronald Corey he had played his last game for Montreal.

Pierre Lacroix had been Roy's agent. Four days later, Roy and Mike Keane were Avalanche players, and Montreal had Jocelyn Thibault, Martin Rucinsky and Andrei Kovalenko. A Quebec team trading with Montreal would have been a political event. A Denver team trading with Montreal was a hockey trade.

1996: Year one. Stanley Cup.

Colorado beat Vancouver, Chicago and Detroit, then swept Florida in the Final. Roy went 16-6 in the playoffs. Sakic scored 34 points in 22 games and won the Conn Smythe. And Game 4 ended at 4:31 of the third overtime on a goal by defenseman Uwe Krupp, not one of the big names.

It was the franchise's first Stanley Cup and Denver's first major-league championship, won by a core Quebec had built, twelve months after Quebec lost the team.

Then hockey turned into war

The Detroit series left a mark. In Game 6, Claude Lemieux checked Kris Draper from behind into the boards, and Draper suffered serious facial injuries. The next March, on the 26th, the teams met at Joe Louis Arena and it erupted: Darren McCarty went after Lemieux, Roy and Mike Vernon fought at center ice, and Detroit won in overtime on a McCarty goal.

From 1996 through 2002, Colorado and Detroit kept blocking each other's path, and between them they won five of the seven Stanley Cups.

Colorado wasn't just good. Colorado was terrifying.

The Avalanche won the 1997 Presidents' Trophy, and Lacroix kept spending. In March 2000 he traded for Ray Bourque, a 39-year-old who had spent his whole career in Boston without a Cup. Colorado lost Game 7 of the conference final to Dallas anyway, so in February 2001 he went again and added Rob Blake.

With Sakic, Forsberg, Roy, Adam Foote, Bourque and Blake, the Avalanche went 52-16-10-4 for 118 points and won another Presidents' Trophy.

Roy. Conn Smythe. Bourque.

In 2001 Colorado beat New Jersey in seven games, with Alex Tanguay scoring twice in a 4-1 Game 7. Roy had a .934 save percentage that postseason and won his third Conn Smythe Trophy, still the only player to win three. Then Sakic took the Cup from Gary Bettman and handed it straight to Bourque before taking his own lap.

Twenty-two seasons. One Cup. Sakic gave it to him first.

The dark, weird years

Then the machine stopped. Roy retired after 2002-03. Forsberg's talent kept running into injuries. Sakic played until 2008-09. Colorado was no longer an automatic contender. Roy came back as head coach in 2013 and won the Jack Adams Award, then left in 2016, and the 2016-17 Avalanche went 22-56-4, the bottom of the rebuild. For a team that had once been terrifying, it was a long way down. But this franchise had hit bottom before, and knew what to do with it.

The new core

With Sakic running the front office, the Avalanche drafted their way back. Gabriel Landeskog went second overall in 2011, Nathan MacKinnon first in 2013, Mikko Rantanen tenth in 2015 and Cale Makar fourth in 2017. Jared Bednar became head coach in 2016, and the November 2017 Matt Duchene trade brought back Samuel Girard and the picks that eventually led to Bowen Byram.

Old dynasty, collapse, new generation. Same playbook.

2022: Full circle

In 2021-22 the Avalanche went 56-19-7 for 119 points, then beat two-time defending champion Tampa Bay in six games for the franchise's third Stanley Cup. Artturi Lehkonen scored the winner in a 2-1 Game 6, and Makar won the Conn Smythe after already taking the Norris Trophy. Late in the Final, Landeskog lost a skate blade blocking a shot, and MacKinnon helped drag his captain to the bench.

Sakic, who lifted the Cup as captain in 1996 and 2001, now had one as GM. Bednar became the first coach to win the Kelly Cup in the ECHL, the Calder Cup in the AHL and the Stanley Cup.

Quebec never stopped

In 2024, MacKinnon scored 140 points and passed the 139 Peter Stastny put up in 1981-82, a franchise record that had stood since Quebec. Then, for the club's 30th season in Denver, the Avalanche wore blue Nordiques sweaters seven times in 2025-26, one of those nights against Montreal. The message from the team itself was simple: there is no Colorado without Quebec.

Quebec lost a team in 1995. It never lost the story.