Denver lost its NHL hockey team when the Colorado Rockies were sold and shipped east to become the New Jersey Devils in May of 1982. Two months later, Denver car dealer Douglas Spedding stepped into the pro hockey void, entering the Colorado Flames expansion team into the minor Central Hockey League. The Flames would serve as a farm club for the NHL’s Calgary Flames. They would play at McNichols Arena, the same building just abandoned by the Rockies.
The Denver Avalanche were a short-lived franchise that played two seasons in the Major Indoor Soccer League between 1980 and 1982. The Avalanche faced a tough landscape in Denver in that era, competing head-to-head with the NBA’s Denver Nuggets and NHL’s Colorado Rockies for fans, sponsors and decent dates at McNichols Arena during the winter time. The team entered bankruptcy and folded after two seasons.
The Denver Grizzlies hockey team is an anomaly in our One-Year Wonders category, a fraternity of defunct teams typically defined by chaos, dysfunction and insolvency. But the Grizzlies, an International Hockey League club owned by veteran minor league baseball operator David Elmore and Donna Tuttle, were a roaring success both on the ice and at the box office.
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