Today In Colorado Avalanche History

I’ve never quite recovered from this trade.

Neither has the team.

for me, i knew things were gonna be different when they let Forsberg go. that was agonizing. but this one is in second place to that.

Scoring the first 2 goals and the gwg in game 7 of the finals apparently gets you no loyalty. Another 25 goal scorer would have been nice the last 3 years.

Tanguay was a guy that was coming into his own and embracing a leadership role on and off the ice with the team. I recall reading quotes from him where he was basically saying that he recognized that with the departure of some of the team’s other key players, he had to be accountable. I really feel that Tanguay became one of the team’s key players and showed that he could create offense and generate scoring chances. It might even sound like sacrilege to say this but at that point, I even felt that Tanguay had done a better job than Hejduk at becoming a leader on the team and was more important to the Avs at that time.

In his last year with the Avs, Tanguay put up a career high in goals (29)s and also posted 78 points in 71 games. And he did that while playing mostly on the second (or third?) line with Brett McLean, who posted a career high with 40 points in 82 games and Ian Laperriere, who posted career highs in goals (21) assists (24) and points (45) while also playing in all 82 games that season.

I thought/think this was a bonehead move. I loved Tanguay! He was young, vibrant, and a clear talent. It seemed obvious that you’d want to keep him.

…is the one I’ve never gotten over. Things have never been quite right since.

(and I guess my friend Dan too) but I thought Tanguay underachieved and floated too often. Great talent. Huge in the 2001 cup clincher. Benefited greatly when paired with Foppa or Super Joe and could finish and pass. But I thought he dogged it way too often. Not Wolski often, but too often nonetheless.

Not that they received fair value in return for him, but Calgary didn’t hold on to him for too long either.

I liked Tanguay, and though I didn’t think he was a floater, I remember one of his biggest criticisms was that he’d disappear for periods of time, or at the wrong time. But it would have been nice to have had him the last couple of years.

I also was upset when he was traded. It was just another head scratcher that was making the team unrecognizable and I wondered how many more guys we were going to loose before the season started.
I had also just bought a Tanguay jersey t-shirt the day before…by the time I received it in the mail, he was gone. Since then I have been afraid to buy any thing with a players name on it (jersey’s included) because I’m afraid it’ll jinx the player and he’ll get traded.

This was the reason I absolutely hated Leopold. I was extremely happy to have Leopold leave, because he was a constant reminder for me that Alex was “no longer with us”. Before that, I had thought he might even become our next captain, since Drury was gone. I also thought he was providing better leadership on our team than Hejduk did at that time. I believe that was the beginning of the end for FG. I never forgave him for that, especially since we ended up getting slightly more than a bag of pucks for him, which was ridiculous. I think Calgary undervalued his abilities/potential as well, and so after seeing what he can do in Montreal it is unlikely we’ll be able to afford him going forward. Up until that, I was still holding on to a shred of hope that we might able to get him back.

Even so, he remains one of my favorite players. A rare thing for me in other players that are traded.

After Super Joe, Tanguay was my favorite player in the early Aughts. Sure, every once in a while he’d get lazy and vanish, but when he was on, the kid was ON. And he was a point-a-gamer. We can’t even count on Paul Stastny to do that these days.