All Praise to the Avalanche

There are some good and bad things that go along with any job.

One of the bad things I get to deal with on occasion is when one of my predictions goes belly up. Perhaps even worse is when a friend catches that I've picked against their favorite club and give me hell.

This happened just two weeks ago when I picked the Wild to take down Colorado in six games during the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

For those of you out there that either don't give a good God damn about hockey, didn't realize it was going on or both, the Avs won this series in convincing fashion.

I thought having a team made up of AARP candidates (Adam Foote, Joe Sakic, Peter Forsberg) would not be a good thing for the Avalanche...I was wrong. Sakic and Forsberg combined to tally 11 points in the Western Conference Quarterfinals. Foote got a total of six penalty minutes and a minus-one rating for the series. Impressive when you think about the Minnesota team they just took out was a much younger club, which I felt would not have any issues in skating around its Northwest Division foes.

I thought we'd see the Jose Theodore that I'm used to seeing. You know the one, used to be full of promise, but never figured he'd do much ever again. Well, that too was wrong. Theodore has been playing pretty well for the last few months. And in the playoffs, he looked like the man that won the Vezina Trophy just a few years ago.

Does this mean I'll not pick against the Avalanche the rest of the postseason? No, not in the least.

What it does mean is I'll take them more seriously when piecing together my prediction in the remainder of this year's playoffs.

So good luck to Colorado the rest of the way...or whatever happy time fun stuff I'm supposed to say.