from Terry Frei of the Denver Post,
Here's the Avalanche's biggest problem as veterans prepare to report for physicals Thursday: It's difficult to come out and declare that you don't want to be as successful in the regular season as you were a year ago.
You can't really say that to your players, to your fans, to the media, to anyone.
But if an adoption of a collective veteran mind-set personified by one of the game's top leaders, Jarome Iginla, makes Colorado better suited for a deeper postseason run in 2015, a regression in the regular-season standings is more than acceptable.
In the first season of Joe Sakic being atop the hockey hierarchy and Patrick Roy behind the bench, the Avs stunningly rebounded. They rang up 112 points and, thanks to the St. Louis Blues' collapse down the stretch, won the Central Division. They also posted the second-best record in the Western Conference and third-best overall in the NHL.
This is a huge compliment, not a slight, but there's no way the Avalanche truly was the third-best team in the league. It was one of the more monumental single-season turnarounds in the history of the league. But then came the first-round loss in seven games to Minnesota, which went down as failure despite the fact that the Wild's payroll was $11 million higher.
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