Colorado Avalanche Trivia
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50 free Colorado Avalanche trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Colorado Avalanche arrived from Quebec City in 1995 and won the Stanley Cup in their very first Denver season, the only NHL team ever to do that after a move. This Avalanche trivia quiz covers the whole franchise story: the WHA Nordiques, three straight first-overall picks, the Eric Lindros trade that changed everything, the near-miss name 'Rocky Mountain Extreme', the Patrick Roy trade, Uwe Krupp's triple-overtime winner, Joe Sakic handing the Cup straight to Ray Bourque in 2001, nine straight division titles, and the Detroit rivalry. It then follows the rebuild: Duchene, Landeskog as the youngest captain in NHL history, Roy behind the bench, Nathan MacKinnon, the 48-point disaster of 2016-17, Cale Makar, and the 2022 title that kept the Avs perfect in Stanley Cup Finals. There are questions on Ball Arena, the yeti-foot logo, the Nordiques throwbacks and the 487-game sellout streak, from easy to genuinely hard. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedic and reference sources before publishing, and each question carries a citation. For more, try our NHL trivia and hockey trivia pages.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which coach led the Avalanche to the 1996 Stanley Cup in their first season in Denver?
Marc Crawford
Marc Crawford had coached the same core in Quebec a year earlier, when it went out in the first round; within twelve months of the move to Denver it was champion.
Q 02The Avco Cup, won by the Quebec Nordiques in 1977, was the championship trophy of which league?
World Hockey Association
World Hockey Association. The NHL's rival folded two years later, and Quebec was one of only four of its clubs taken into the older league.
Q 03Which Swede did the Nordiques take first overall in 1989, the first European ever picked No. 1 in the NHL draft?
Mats Sundin
Mats Sundin. Quebec traded him to Toronto in 1994, and he went on to captain the Maple Leafs for 11 seasons and become their all-time leading scorer.
Q 04Which No. 1 draft pick refused to play for Quebec and was traded to Philadelphia in 1992?
Eric Lindros
Eric Lindros. He never won a Stanley Cup with Philadelphia, while players from the haul sent the other way helped the franchise he snubbed win it in 1996 and 2001.
Q 05Which name did COMSAT reportedly plan to give its relocated NHL team in 1995?
Rocky Mountain Extreme
Rocky Mountain Extreme. When word got out, fans reacted so badly that the owners dropped the idea and unveiled the name Colorado Avalanche that August.
Q 06Which team did COMSAT already own when it bought the Nordiques in 1995?
Denver Nuggets
Denver Nuggets. The Nordiques' owner had asked Quebec's government for a bailout, and when it refused he sold to COMSAT, which had owned Denver's NBA team since 1989.
Q 07Which Blink-182 song have Avalanche fans sung along to late in home wins since 2019?
All the Small Things
All the Small Things. The team started playing the 1999 hit in the third period of home games it was leading comfortably, and the singalong had become its anthem by the time Colorado won the 2022 Stanley Cup.
Q 08At which Denver stadium did the Avalanche host Detroit in an outdoor game in February 2016?
Coors Field
Coors Field. The baseball park was iced over for the NHL's Stadium Series, and the old rivals played to the wire, Detroit winning 5-3 on a goal with a minute left.
Q 09Whom did the Avalanche sweep in the 1996 Stanley Cup Final?
Florida Panthers
Florida Panthers. Their fans had spent the spring showering the ice with toy rats after every goal, but the third-year club was swept by a team in its first season in Denver.
Q 10Which defenseman scored in the third overtime of Game 4 to clinch the 1996 Cup?
Uwe Krupp
Uwe Krupp scored it unassisted for a 1-0 win, months after wrecking his knee in the Avalanche's first-ever game, an injury that cost him almost the whole regular season.
Q 11Which team offered Joe Sakic a three-year, $21 million offer sheet in 1997 that Colorado matched?
New York Rangers
New York Rangers. Colorado had one week to match the deal or lose its captain, and its decision to pay up helped push salaries higher across the NHL.
Q 12Which rookie won the Calder Trophy for Colorado in 1998-99?
Chris Drury
Chris Drury. As a boy he pitched his Connecticut team to the 1989 Little League World Series title, and he arrived in Denver as college hockey's player of the year.
Q 13After which tragedy did the Avalanche postpone their first two 1999 playoff games?
The Columbine High School shooting
Q 21Which two star wingers did Colorado sign in 2003 after Roy retired?
Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne
Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne. The old Anaheim linemates reunited to chase a Cup, but injuries limited Kariya to 51 games, Selanne managed only 32 points, and both left after one season.
Q 22Which Avalanche player's career ended after Todd Bertuzzi's punch from behind in March 2004?
Steve Moore
Steve Moore suffered three fractured neck vertebrae and never played again; the punch was payback for his earlier hit on Vancouver's captain, and the lawsuit that followed was not settled until 2014.
Q 23The Avalanche's first sellout streak in Denver set an NHL record at roughly how many home games?
490
The Columbine High School shooting. The series with San Jose was reshuffled to open in California, and the Avalanche wore patches for the victims for the rest of the playoffs.
Q 14Which star defenseman did the Avalanche get from the Los Angeles Kings weeks before the 2001 playoffs?
Rob Blake
Rob Blake. Colorado gave up Adam Deadmarsh and Aaron Miller among others, and within four months Blake was scoring in a Stanley Cup Final that Colorado won.
Q 15Which real estate entrepreneur bought the Avalanche and their new arena in July 2000?
Stan Kroenke
Stan Kroenke. His first full season as owner ended with the 2001 Stanley Cup, and two decades later he added a Super Bowl with his Los Angeles Rams.
Q 16Whom did the Avalanche beat in seven games in the 2001 Stanley Cup Final?
New Jersey Devils
New Jersey Devils. The defending champions led the series 3-2 after winning in Denver, but Colorado answered with a 4-0 shutout in New Jersey and took Game 7 at home 3-1.
Q 17In 2001, captain Joe Sakic broke with tradition by handing the Stanley Cup straight to which teammate?
Ray Bourque
Ray Bourque had spent 21 seasons in Boston without a title and had asked to be traded to a contender for one last try, so Sakic let him lift the Cup before anyone else.
Q 18Which internal injury forced the Avalanche's star Swedish centre out of the rest of the 2001 playoffs?
A ruptured spleen
A ruptured spleen. It was removed in surgery right after the seven-game series with Los Angeles, and Colorado had to win the last two rounds and the Cup without him.
Q 19Whose record of eight straight division titles did the Avalanche break with their ninth in 2002-03?
Montreal Canadiens
Montreal Canadiens. Their mark had stood since 1982, and Colorado only passed it on the season's final day, after an overtime goal with ten seconds left against Anaheim kept the race alive.
Q 20Which Avalanche player won both the Art Ross and Hart trophies in 2002-03?
Peter Forsberg
Peter Forsberg. He had sat out the whole previous regular season recovering from surgery, then came back to lead the league with 106 points.
Roughly 490. The run of 487 sellouts began weeks into the team's first season in Denver and lasted almost eleven years, ending in October 2006 after several stars had left and 326 seats went unsold.
Q 24Which Vezina-winning goalie did Colorado get from Montreal for David Aebischer in 2006?
Jose Theodore
Jose Theodore, the league MVP of 2002, went 13-15-1 in his first full season in Denver and lost the starting job, then won it back and took Colorado to the second round in 2008.
Q 25Which Avalanche rookie set an NHL record with a 20-game point streak in 2006-07?
Paul Stastny
Paul Stastny. His streak beat the NHL rookie record by three games and, by four, the franchise rookie mark set in Quebec by his own father, Peter.
Q 26Whom did the Avalanche take with the third overall pick in 2009, then their highest ever?
Matt Duchene
Matt Duchene. After months of talk that he wanted out, he was sent to Ottawa in November 2017 in a three-team trade that brought Colorado four players and three draft picks.
Q 27Who became the youngest captain the NHL had then seen when the Avalanche gave him the 'C' in 2012?
Gabriel Landeskog
Gabriel Landeskog was 19 years and 286 days old, eleven days younger than Sidney Crosby had been, and ten years later he was the captain who lifted the Stanley Cup for Colorado.
Q 28Under first-year coach Patrick Roy in 2013-14, the Avalanche went from 29th in the league to winning which title?
Central Division
Central Division. Roy's team won 52 games and he was named coach of the year, but the turnaround stopped there: Colorado lost its first-round playoff series to Minnesota in seven games.
Q 29Which defenseman who learned hockey in Denver did Colorado pass on in 2013?
Seth Jones
Seth Jones took up hockey while his father played pro basketball in Denver, and it was Joe Sakic who told the family to start with skating lessons; he fell to Nashville at fourth in the draft.
Q 30Which star winger did the Avalanche trade away in January 2025, only for him to knock them out of that spring's playoffs?
Mikko Rantanen
Mikko Rantanen went to Carolina, was moved on to Dallas six weeks later, and then scored a third-period hat-trick against Colorado in Game 7 of the first round.