Avs Agonistes.

After somehow giving up losing for Lent, the shell-of-a-former-self, yet still scrappy Avalanche lost by the sticks of former Avs Peter Forsberg and Paul Kariya, now with the Nashville Predators, and will miss the Stanley Cup playoffs. The last time this franchise missed the playoffs, they were wearing the unis of the Quebec Nordiques in 1994.

This means I will have to suffer through the Cup chase (if it manages to be decently televised, which I doubt) without a serious rooting interest, and what makes it worse is that if the Avs had managed to squeak in past Calgary, they would have been up against those old foes, the Detroit Red Wings....and I guarantee I would have made every effort to watch that first round series, even though most of the major players from that rivalry are retired or have left town.

I'm going to have to figure out what going without a team in the Stanley Cup playoffs is like.