Denver SportsThe Denver Broncos are an elite team in the National Football League, but they haven't always been. They started out in 1960 in the American Football League. They played their first game against the Boston Patriots. The Broncos won the game 13-10. In the beginning, the team wasn't extremely successful. They had a few good games, but overall, they had more not so good seasons. The Broncos have won ten division titles, and are definitely not strangers to the Super Bowl. They've played in six of them. In fact, they won two back to back. Super Bowl XXXII was played against the Green Bay Packers, and the Broncos won 31-24. Then, the following year, Super Bowl XXXIII was played against the Atlanta Falcons. The Broncos beat them 34-19. One reason for the team's huge popularity? Primarily John Elway. Elway was once the quarterback for the Broncos, and is still their most popular and famous player, despite his retirement more than ten years ago. In recent news, the Denver Broncos have made trades for different players, including Jay Cutler and Kyle Orton.There are many popular names in football coming from the Broncos. Terrell Davis, Rod Smith, and Jason Elam join John Elway on this list. Despite the Denver Broncos' rough start back in the 1960's, they have made it to the top of the football chain, will continue to play amazing games in the future, and remain an important part of the Denver sports scene. Readers Speak - Why the Broncos Are My Favorite Denver Sports Team: Reasons the Broncos Are Great! I Met Thunder, He's My Favorite Bronco The Denver Nuggets were not always the Denver Nuggets. Beginning as the Denver Larks and then the Denver Rockets, this Denver team got its start over forty years ago in the American Basketball Association (ABA). This is back in the time when the ABA was still competing with the National Basketball Association (NBA). As an ABA team the Denver Rockets hosted such greats as Ralph Simpson and Spencer Haywood. After the ABA-NBA merger in the 1976-77 season, the Denver Rockets changed their name to the Denver Nuggets (since the Rockets was a title that was already held by the Houston Rockets in the NBA). The Nuggets early NBA play was strong as they won their first two division titles. Soon, led by new coach Doug Moe and players like Alex English and Kiki Vandeweghe, the Nuggets led the league in scoring and made it to the Western Conference finals once in the 1980s (and lost in five games to the Lakers). Denver has also had other greats such as Dikembe Mutombo, when the Nuggets became the first 8th seeded playoff team in NBA history to upset a number one seed in the first round of the playoffs. Other great stars include Antonio Mcdyess, Carmelo Anthony, Chauncey Billups, Allen Iverson, and many others. In 2005 Denver once again won the division title, the first in 18 years. Since drafting Carmelo Anthony, the Nuggets have made the playoffs. Denver has begun to look like a consistent playoff contender, however they are still gunning for their first franchise NBA championship. Denver sports fans can expect to see the Nuggets play great basketball well into the future. Readers Speak - Why the Nuggets Are My Favorite Denver Sports Team: Great Player in Carmelo Anthony Why I'll Always Be a Nuggets Fan The Contributions of Ty Lawson Denver's Colorado Rockies don't have quite as the history as some of the other Major League Baseball teams. The Rockies were only created in 1991. The team didn't officially start playing until 1993. But although their history may be short, they've managed to accomplish plenty in the time that they've had. Though the team's first season could be described as rocky, they did manage to find their groove. The Colorado Rockies won their first game the first time they played at their home stadium, Mile High Stadium. They played the Montreal Expos, and managed to beat them 11-4. The team managed to finish the season with a record-breaking 67 wins. The Colorado Rockies continued to improve over the years. Core players like Todd Helton and Mike Hampton joined their roster and quickly made a mark on the baseball world. Throughout the 1990's and the 2000's the Rockies had great attendance at their games and played well, but never had the sort of success that many fans hoped the team would. Matt Holliday was drafted by the Colorado Rockies in the 1998 Major League Baseball Draft, but the team didn't really see this pay off until their amazing 2007 season. With Holliday's help, the team played their most impressive season yet. The Colorado Rockies managed to win the National League Pennant, while Matt Holliday was awarded 2007 National League Championship Series MVP. The Colorado Rockies have continued to play very well, although they have yet to have a season as successful as 2007's. They made it to the playoffs last season and showed a lot of promise. They were eventually taken out of the playoffs by the Philadelphia Phillies. The Colorado Rockies will continue to be a major contender in the Major League Baseball world, will hopefully see the playoffs many more times in years to come, and remain a marquee Denver Sports team. Readers Speak - Why the Rockies Are My Favorite Denver Sports Team: Became a Baseball Fan Because of a Rockies Game NHL hockey returned to Denver in 1995 as the Colorado Avalanche. The city had previously hosted an NHL franchise, the Colorado Rockies (not to be confused with the baseball team of the same name), from 1976 to 1982, before an ownership change led to the Rockies moving to New Jersey to become the Devils. In the years after the Rockies' departure, several minor league teams played in Denver, but none lasted long. The team currently known as the Colorado Avalanche was formerly known as the Quebec Nordiques, a team that had been in existence since 1972, when it got its start in the NHL's rival league during the 1970s, the World Hockey Association. After the WHA folded in 1979, the Nordiques, along with the Hartford Whalers, Winnipeg Jets, and Edmonton Oilers, transferred to the NHL. For many years, the Nordiques, like the other WHA transfers, were considered the doormats of the NHL. As the late 1980s and early 1990s progressed, the team began to improve, thanks to draft picks like Joe Sakic, Mats Sundin, and Owen Nolan (each of whom became NHL stars, though not necessarily with the Nordiques or the Avalanche). The team was also able to draft Eric Lindros in 1991, though he refused to play in Quebec and was traded to the Philadelphia Flyers in 1992 for Peter Forsberg, Mike Ricci, Ron Hextall, Chris Simon, and a draft pick that ended up being Jocelyn Thibault. With the exception of Hextall, each of these players played a huge role in the early years of the Avalanche, particularly in their Stanley Cup run of 1996. As the 1990s progressed, financial troubles began to take a toll on the Nordiques. The falling value of the Canadian dollar against the American dollar made it difficult for the team to make ends meet, especially since eighteen other teams were in the US at the time. In addition, player salaries began to skyrocket, so for a team in the second-smallest major league sports market in North America (Green Bay being the smallest), it became too much. In May 1995, the Nordiques were sold to a new owner, who then moved the team to Denver. The Colorado Avalanche, were an immediate success in their first season (1995-1996). It helped that they had a solid core of players that had been building since the late 1980s (and that incidentally would be the cornerstone of the team's success up until the early 2000s). The acquisition of goaltender Patrick Roy, who in 2006 was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, made the team even more solid. They would win the Stanley Cup in 1996, their first year in Denver, sweeping the also-new Florida Panthers in four games. The rest of the 1990s brought no Stanley Cups back to Denver, but did see the opening of the Pepsi Center, a state-of-the-art arena, in 1999. The period also saw the development of a fierce rivalry between the Avalanche and the Detroit Red Wings. During the 1996 playoffs, the Western Conference finals between the Avs and the Wings turned ugly when the Avalanche's Claude Lemieux checked Red Wing Kris Draper face-first into the boards as he was leaving the ice for a line change. Draper was forced to undergo reconstructive surgery, and Lemieux became a marked man. The next year, in March of 1997, the two teams met, and Wings enforcer Darren McCarty attempted to fight Lemieux, sparking a melee that involved nine fights, 148 penalty minutes and a goalie fight between Patrick Roy and the Wings' Mike Vernon -- all in the span of about five minutes. The Red Wings ended up getting the best of the Avalanche in the playoffs, and went on to win the Stanley Cup. In 2000, the Avalanche saw new success when the struggling Boston Bruins traded legendary defenseman Ray Bourque (in addition to former Los Angeles Kings star Rob Blake) to the Avalanche in the hopes that he would be able to win a Stanley Cup in what would be his final NHL season. The Avs did just that, winning their second Stanley Cup in five years, and their first on home ice. The game is known for the moment when Joe Sakic, upon receiving the Cup from NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, immediately turned and handed it to Bourque. Aside from hosting the All Star Game that year, the season was also the best numerically in Avalanche history, as the team ended the season with 52 wins and 118 points. The rest of the 2000s were not quite as successful, and the aging or departure of many of their players from the mid-1990s, especially the departure of Patrick Roy (to retirement, in 2003) and Peter Forsberg (2005, to the Philadelphia Flyers for salary cap reasons, which was a new implementation at the time), and the failure of Teemu Selanne and Paul Kariya to ignite as a duo in Denver as they did with the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim years earlier, led to the team missing the playoffs for the first time in team history (and counting Nordiques history, the first time since 1994) in 2007. While the Avalanche also missed the playoffs in 2009, they retain solid forward Milan Hedjuk, though he admittedly has struggled in recent years, as well as veteran leader Adam Foote, who in 2009 became the second captain in team history. Also in 2009, the Avalanche acquire goalie Craig Anderson, who has adapted well to the starting goalie position after having been a backup for the Florida Panthers and Chicago Blackhawks. Joe Sakic's retirement was a huge blow to the team, and his number 19 jersey now hangs in the rafters of the Pepsi Center next to Patrick Roy's number 33 and Ray Bourque's number 77. The book seems to be officially closed on the Avalanche's period of domination during the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the future of the team will be interesting to watch as they try to replace the several current or potential Hall of Famers who were the cornerstone of the team for so long. Expect to see the Colorado Avalanche remain an important piece of the Denver sports scene for many years to come. Readers Speak - Why the Avalanche Are My Favorite Denver Sports Team: I Live in Georgia, and I Still Like the Avalanche Avalanche Games and Nice Memories The Avs at the Pepsi Dome, the Atmosphere is Amazing The Quebec Nordiques became the Colorado Avalanche, I Became a Fan The Quebec Nordiques became the Colorado Avalanche, I Became a Fan
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