Morning Flurries: Avalanche fall short, Rampage on a roll

Last season, the Colorado Avalanche and their AHL affiliate were both, for lack of a better way to put it, in dire straits.

The NHL club was historically bad. To put it in perspective, the Arizona Coyotes lost their first 11 straight games of this season - and are still on pace to finish ahead of where Colorado did last year. So is Buffalo (although, frankly, not by much).

Sometimes, when a team is that bad, the consolation is that their AHL affiliate is at least tearing it up. Right before the Toronto Maple Leafs picked up Auston Matthews, they had good prospects, but miserable NHL presence- so while they finished dead last in the league, at least their minor league affiliate was winning.

Last year, that wasn’t the case for Colorado. The San Antonio Rampage were plagued for with talk of bad locker room culture, and the year prior a few players had left citing an overall bad atmosphere for the organization altogether.

This year, things are turning around on both fronts.

Thursday night saw the Avalanche drop their second straight game, coming up short in St. Louis against their rivals and Paul Stastny (yes, he scored. No, we aren’t mad. Just disappointed.). It’s a letdown after their previous game against the Montreal Canadiens halted a 10-game win streak. [Mile High Hockey]

The San Antonio Rampage, though, are currently third in the ultra-competitive AHL Pacific Division. Although every team in the division currently has a .513 points percentage or better, the Rampage have been climbing with a 4-4-2-0 record in their last 10 games. Here’s more on how the team - and its players - are doing right now. [MHH]

In other league news:

Tonight, I covered the Blue Jackets and Coyotes, and got the quote of the year on goaltender interference from John Tortorella. I think he settles our debate from yesterday:

Meanwhile, out west, the Vancouver Canucks are once again in free-fall (stop me if you’ve heard this one before). They just lost 4-0 to the more-than-miserable Buffalo Sabres... but are some of their defensive pairing deployments to blame? [Canucks Army]

It’s always kind of funny when Forbes writes about sports, but they have a point this time: the All Star Game is a piss-poor replacement for sending players to the Olympics. [Forbes]

We also stumbled across this hilarious story from St. Louis, where a 95-year-old Blues fan chatted about her life, hockey fandom, and loving Brett Hull. [NHL.com]

Finally, I saw yesterday that there was some disgruntled mumbling about me not putting enough Avalanche-centric content here in the Flurries.

I try to put in relevant things from around the league and the world of sports (and sometimes pop culture, sue me) to give you guys a healthy mix of Avalanche content and hockey, sports, and life in general. Morning poop reads, yanno?

If you REALLY NEED more Avalanche content though, and you think I’m ignoring stuff, toss it my way? I welcome any and all suggestions for good reads to put in here, either through comments here on the site or on Twitter.

My DMs are always open for requests or questions, with the caveat that anyone who gives me the impression their goal is to harass or make me uncomfortable gets a quick block. If you’ve got Avs content you think I’m missing, though, shoot it at me! I’m @catmsilverman on the Twitter machine.