Goodbye Matt Duchene
It’s no secret, Matt Duchene asked to be traded, and the Colorado Avalanche looked hard to find the best fit for the team.
This trade was not a surprise, Duchene made it apparent that he didn’t want to be a member of the Colorado Avalanche any longer. While he played well this season, while waiting for the Avalanche to find a trade partner, it was constant source of distraction for not only him, but the players around him.
It is well-known that Matt Duchene was a Colorado Avalanche fan growing up. He had Colorado Avalanche posters and jerseys plastering his wall as a kid. Perhaps that’s why this trade request hurts so much. He loved this team, just like we do.
Duchene was part of the Colorado Avalanche team since he was drafted by the team, third overall, in 2009.
His first season in Colorado he was able to amass 24 goals and 31 assists in 81 games. Not bad for a rookie breaking into the NHL. The next season the hopes were high, although he played one less game than the season prior, he managed to boost his goals to 27 in the year and 40 assists. Duchene only topped those points once, 2013-2014 with 70 points.
Matt only ever played a full 82 games once in his career, and it was the 2014-2015 season, he tallied 21 goals and 34 points. And in 2015-2016 season he got his only 30 goals season. Duchene has had 3 assists in the NHL post season, and not one of them was a goal.
Matt Duchene got to don the Canadian Maple Leaf at the Olympics, in the four games he played he was held off the scoreboard. He credits former Avalanche head coach Patrick Roy as being the reason why he got to be represent Team Canada at the Olympics. [Sudbury Star]
Matt Duchene got his name in papers when he helped buy signed B’s jersey for bullied girl’s birthday. When a dad trying to win a signed Bruins jersey in an auction for his bullied daughters’ birthday, he couldn’t match up. Enter Matt Duchene. [CBS Sports] But perhaps one of the moments Matt Duchene is most fondly remembered is for his first pump during his draft… and that the first pump happened when he hadn’t been chosen number 2 overall, which meant he still had a chance at being picked by the Colorado Avalanche. [Youtube]
He was always one of us. Until now.
The next morning and it’s still shell shock.
I don’t know why this trade is so hard to take? It was going to happen, the question was only “When?”.
Maybe as Sandie said, it’s because “He was one of us”?
That this situation developed the way it did is a sad failure on the part of the organization. But the organization seems to be learning and seems to have turned the corner now. Maybe things are looking up for everyone involved.. I sure wish Dutchy all the best after this week.
“After this week” indeed!
As I remember it, the drafting of Duchene was the start of a new era for the Avs. He was the fresh, new hope for the organization. The sting I feel, I think, is the lost potential of that bright future.
“For of all sad words of tongue and pen,
The saddest are these: It might have been.”
John Greenleaf Whittier
Okay found the site – I’m still “chart guy 🙂 I’m just sad to see it all go up in smoke. Duchene is a good player, but I think the whole thing started when Sakic blind sided him. Had he even told him that he was going to say there were only two untouchables, but that trading him was pretty unlikely, the whole thing might not have spiraled out of control the way it did. Poor personnel relationship led to a pretty sensitive guy getting his feelings hurt. Would it have mattered? All I know is that when I ran a math department, there were some people who needed to be treated with kid gloves or they would get in a funk.
“He was always one of us. Until now.”
For me he will always be in a way one of us. He is an important piece of Avs ‘modern’ history and his trade might be the pebble starting the avalanche of Avalanche.