Raise your hand if you believed – really, truly believed – that the Colorado Avalanche were going to raise another Cup this spring?

Note the end of the word – it’s believed, not believe.

Trading away one of the best players in franchise history – an undeniable piece of the Avalanche’s core – is anything but confidence inspiring. But really, go back. Did you truly think they had it in them?

I don’t profess to “know” hockey, but I know that a team that doesn’t have a great goaltending situation rarely wins a title. Sure, Mackenzie Blackwood has been an upgrade, but is he the answer? That remains to be seen; what’s true is that the three teams ahead of the Avalanche in the Western Conference standings all have better goaltenders. In the month of January, Blackwood has a save percentage of .900 or higher in only half the games. He’s been below that mark in each of his last four games; the Avalanche are 1-3 in that stretch.

I also know that locker rooms, regardless of the sport, are a finicky place. Want to win a championship? The room had better be solid. Following the trade of Rantanen, do you suppose the Avs locker room is a cheery place?

“I never thought in a million years he’d leave. So, yeah, it just sucks,” Nathan MacKinnon, the NHL’s reigning MVP, said following the news. “A lot of the guys are just shocked. I mean, pretty crazy someone like that getting traded right now. He’s a big, big part of our team, our culture.”

“A lot of guys.”

“Culture.”

“Right now.”

Sounds like a room that might be a bit icy at the moment.

Of course, there is the theory – the one the Avalanche brass was apparently applying – that a team’s third-best player should not make more than its best two players, MacKinnon and Cale Makar. To be fair, that can upset a locker room sometimes, too. Rantanen reportedly wanted $14 million a year; MacKinnon, who inked an 8-year extension in 2023, currently makes $12.6.

To some extent, it’s what the market dictates. The value of a deal signed in 2023 won’t likely be the same as one signed in 2025. Look across the street, where Patrick Surtain II was once the highest paid cornerback in league history; a day later he wasn’t and in the not too distant future, he might not even be in the top five. Timing is everything. Even MacKinnon understands that.

“I don’t care. I mean, I was making [$6.3 million] for a long time. I don’t know if I was top-five on the team,” MacKinnon added. “Anyone who really knows me knows I really don’t care about money. It’s the last thing on my mind. And whoever’s up, I mean, if Cale is up, who knows, he’d get 20. So it is what it is… You have to talk to Joe (Sakic) and (Chris MacFarland). I want guys to get paid. I think he’s earned it. Mikko has earned a big payday. He scored 50, 100 points every season.”

Based on his post-trade comments, does it feel like MacKinnon would have been sucking sour grapes about his buddy making $1.4 million more? Neither one of them would have any trouble picking up the tab at Outback, and a steak sure tastes better accompanied by wine out of the Cup. Even if that didn’t sit well with Nate the Great longterm, contracts are meant to be torn up and rewritten – if, of course, it really mattered at all.

To that point, where in the heck was MacKinnon during the negotiations that seemingly went sour? If the Nuggets were in a similar pickle, do you think for a second that Nikola Jokic wouldn’t have been consulted?

“Nikola, what do you want us to do? This? Or That?”

Joker: “That.”

That is what the Nuggets higher-ups would have done. Period.

Seems like the organization that owns both teams would apply the same logic from one generational, franchise player to the next. Then again, hockey – its teams, executives, coaches, players and fans – is a different kind of beast. The rules of modern sports don’t always apply the Good Ol’ Hockey Game.

Rantanen’s contract situation wasn’t the only thing standing between the Avs and a Cup. Losing one of their biggest weapons is a blow to be sure, but Colorado’s problems can’t be boiled down to just that.

Aside from the aforementioned, tenuous goaltending situation – something that’s plagued Colorado ever since winning their last Cup and telling Darcy Kuemper goodbye (and even he wasn’t exactly Patrick Roy) – the Avs fortunes are also riding on the dependability of currently-injured and previously-unreliable Valeri Nichushkin, as well as the hope of all hopes that Captain Gabe Landeskog can return from an injury that has kept him off the ice since Game 5 of the Stanley Cup (that would be June of 2022).

That’s a lot of thin ice on which the Avs are skating.

It’s been suggested that perhaps the trade that sent Rantanen away and brought in forwards Martin Necas and Jack Drury (and a second-round pick in this year’s draft and a fourth-rounder in 2026) could be “step 1” in a bigger move that could ultimately make the Avs “better.” For MacKinnon’s sake, let’s hope that’s the case. It’s no knock on Necas or Drury, but nobody’s confusing them with the “missing pieces.”

“I felt that the pieces we got made sense to strike now,” MacFarland said of the trade, adding that it was a “business decision.”

Whether the Avs were simply cutting their losses and trying to make the best of a bad situation, or simply being “cheap,” we may never know. Business decision or secret strategy, well, that remains to be seen. The NHL trade deadline is March 7, enough time to make a good faith run at Rantanen (too late now) or pull off “step 2” of something special (perhaps).

Raise your hand if you still believe the Avs can win this year’s Stanley Cup?

Bueller? Bueller? Bo Nix?

Anyone?

Anything is possible – including winning a Stanley Cup – but on a chilly morning in Denver, it feels like the Avs have been doomed all along.