Following the puck wasn’t a priority Saturday night at Coors Field, and to some, the score was secondary. Hockey at the home of baseball’s Rockies between the Avalanche and Red Wings was a celebration, a cold and frosty toast to the growth of the game in Colorado.
The Avalanche is the source of the surge. Hockey, at all levels, spread like a high-country avalanche when the up-and-coming Quebec Nordiques relocated to Denver in 1995 and, soon after, won two Stanley Cups. The immediate success of the team and rock-star attraction to players such as Joe Sakic, Peter Forsberg and Patrick Roy led to thousands of new youth and adult hockey players, hundreds of new coaches and officials, and a slew of new ice rinks.
“I actually started to play hockey because the Avalanche won the Stanley Cup in 2001,” said Lakewood-raised goalie Nicole Hensley, the all-time saves leader in NCAA Division I women’s hockey. “Definitely sparked the interest. I was a huge fan.”
Over the past 20 years, Colorado has become one of the country’s best hockey markets, and home-grown players such as Hensley, who will represent Team USA at next month’s world championships, are competing at the highest level. Colorado College and the University of Denver have a combined 11 players from the state on their roster, and those teams drew 35,144 fans to “The Battle on Blake” at Coors Field last weekend.
“The amount of talented players and coaches in Colorado has skyrocketed over the past 20 years,” said Mike Gempeler, who started Rocky Mountain Hockey Schools in 1994 and runs the U.S. Junior Development Program and CCM Showcase out of metro Denver facilities. “Junior leagues and Division I universities are now looking to Colorado to recruit talented players and experienced coaches like never before.”
Coors Field is the third Major League Baseball venue to host an NHL Stadium Series event and sixth overall. The NHL also has had eight Winter Classics on Jan. 1, each in the Eastern time zone. With the success of the events this weekend, Colorado might someday host the Winter Classic. Twenty years ago, the only big January outdoor sporting event was a Broncos playoff game. At the time, Denver Mayor Wellington Webb figured that was as good as it would get.
“The mayor told me when I was completing the deal that ice hockey would never make it here. He said, ‘It’s a football town,’ ” recalled Gary Lane, the city of Denver’s former director of theaters and arenas. “We sure proved him — and a lot of others — wrong.”
Hockey every Tuesday
The influence of the Avalanche’s arrival, in the NHL’s second attempt to get a foothold in Denver, has spread from tykes to adults, such as Lane, 63, who plays hockey every Tuesday in Centennial.
The number of adult recreational players in Colorado has increased by more than 500 percent, to 4,692, since 1995, according to USA Hockey. And that figure doesn’t include thousands of others who play in leagues not sanctioned by USA Hockey.
Colorado youth hockey players have doubled to more than 10,000 in 20 years and top-end amateur programs that didn’t exist in 1995 are producing junior, college and professional talent. Colorado Springs-based USA Hockey is now surrounded by some of the best players and coaches in America.
“Our youth hockey is as healthy as anywhere nationally, and we’re creating top-end players as good as any state, per capita,” said Rick Boh, a former Colorado College and NHL player from Canada who successfully established hockey-specific retail stores throughout the state. He played hockey at Colorado College in the 1980s and grew his hockey-specialized retail store, Players Bench, as the sport’s popularity surged along the Front Range. He opened his first Colorado store in Littleton around the time the Avalanche played its first game in Denver in October 1995. He chose to do business in Colorado instead of the other new NHL markets opening at the time in Florida and Carolina.
“Colorado became the perfect storm, with Quebec and the players they had coming here,” said Boh, who sold Players Bench to national giant Total Hockey last summer. “I was a little concerned about Florida and Carolina and the long-term stability of those markets. Colorado had the best matrix of factors that we needed, including the healthiest B market of registered hockey players of the markets we were looking at. They had established college hockey teams, a solid minor-league history and cold weather. I was more convinced the NHL would find a long-term home here in Colorado than anywhere else.”
He was proven right. Since the Avs’ arrival:
• Colorado has produced hundreds of junior, college and professional players. The Colorado Thunderbirds (metro Denver) and Colorado Rampage (Monument) are members of the Tier I Elite League (ages 14-18) and playing among America’s top young talent.
• Forty-four players born in Colorado are now playing Division I hockey, according to College Hockey Inc., compared with 20 in 2002-03. According to former University of Denver defenseman Todd Kidd, he and only four other Colorado natives were playing Division I college hockey when the Avalanche arrived in 1995.
• There are 10 Coloradans playing in the Canadian Hockey League, the umbrella for the Western, Ontario and Quebec major-junior leagues. In 1995, there were none.
• High school hockey in Colorado didn’t exist in 1995, having been shut down by the Colorado High School Activities Association because of security problems in the 1980s. But because of the Avalanche/NHL influence, the preps soon returned. There are now 32 CHSAA teams and 88 overall, according to Colorado Amateur Hockey Association president Randy Kanai.
• In 1995, girls in Colorado played exclusively on boys teams. Now, Colorado Select Girls Hockey is one of the country’s premier A, double-A and triple-A girls organizations, and the girls are also playing in fall and spring leagues. According to USA Hockey, 2,193 Colorado girls are registered, eighth most in this country.
• Former Avalanche players such as Ken Klee and Adam Foote are among many retired NHL players now living and coaching hockey in Colorado. George Gwozdecky, who coached DU to 2004 and 2005 NCAA titles, is now head coach at Valor Christian High School, which has tentative plans to be the first in the state to build an on-campus rink.
Popular in winter and summer
Hockey is for all ages, at least when you eliminate checking. Former DU forward Daryl Seltenreich co-founded the adult Rocky Mountain Hockey League in 1990 with 17 teams in the winter and four in the summer. The RMHL has grown to 94 summer teams and 109 this winter. The RMHL continues to grow, despite new rinks creating their own “beer” leagues.
“With the success the Avalanche had their first season, many players joined the league who were new to hockey,” Seltenreich said. “We also saw an increase in the number of players returning to the sport they played in their youth. There were also a large number of players who began to play as a result of their own children’s newly found interest in playing hockey because the Avalanche were in town.”
Outdoor adult hockey in Colorado has grown just as much as the indoor game. The rinks are smaller and a goalie isn’t always needed, but the participation is significant.
David Janowiec of Erie runs the Pabst Colorado Pond Hockey Tournament in Silverthorne. It’s the largest pond hockey event west of the Mississippi River, and this year’s tournament, held more than a week ago, was sold out (150 teams). There were participants from 40 states and three countries. Gempeler runs a pond hockey tournament at Keystone that drew 97 teams last month. He caters to all levels of play and has seen it increase in size every year.
Colorado’s embrace of hockey goes back to the Avalanche, the NHL and the immediate success the second time it had a team in the world’s premier hockey league. The Denver Grizzlies of the International Hockey League helped pave the way while playing their only season in 1994-95 at McNichols Sports Arena. They won the league championship that season to lather the community for hockey and could not stop the NHL from taking their place in Denver.
“The right opportunity came around with (Grizzlies owner) Dave Elmore and the IHL, during the IHL heyday,” said Lane, the city’s events boss at the time. “I knew we had to have them play at McNichols to maximize the opportunity, but, of course, they wanted to pay the cheaper (Denver) Coliseum costs. I had written a paragraph into the Grizzlies’ contract that gave the city the right to terminate the contract without cause if the NHL wanted to expand or move a team to Denver.
“I took a lot of grief from the league and other IHL owners, but held my ground on the ‘drop dead’ clause, as I felt the NHL was going to be a future possibility. It was important to keep a growth pattern for Denver, and that really was the end goal.”
In 1995, Mayor Webb was right about one thing: Denver is indeed a football town.
But thanks to the Avalanche, hockey has impressively found its place. At Coors Field this weekend.
Mike Chambers: mchambers@denverpost.com or Twitter: @MikeChambers
States with the most registered USA Hockey players, 2014-15:
MEN’S HOCKEY
State Players
Minnesota 55,450
Michigan 50,602
Massachusetts 49,591
New York 48,580
Illinois 30,553
Pennsylvania30,078
California 26,383
New Jersey 18,753
Wisconsin 17,917
Ohio 14,735
Colorado 13,652
Texas 13,500
Florida 12,505
Virginia 10,063
WOMEN’S HOCKEY
States with the most girls/women hockey players, 2014-15:
StatePlayers
Minnesota 12,808
Massachusetts 10,310
New York 5,339
Michigan 4,794
Wisconsin 3,093
Illinois 2,840
Connecticut 2,423
Colorado 2,193
California 2,029
Arkansas 1,865
