Hopefully if MacKinnon switches to 22 he has a talk with Hunwick first.
The fact that Hunwick was allowed to keep his number after we drafted MacKinnon is utterly baffling to me. Plus after we drafted him I had got used to seeing #13 on MacKinnon's jersey, but I digress.
I realise my posts in this thread have been an assortment of complaints about the Avalanche's number retirement policy (#26 and especially #40 won't be, come on) so I'll add what I have to say about Hejduk... until we got Tanguay back last year he was the last guy playing from when I first got into hockey and it was sad for me in that respect, although like all of the Avalanche's best players before him the end of his career had been considerably more ignominious than the first ~75% owing to factors both within and outwith his own control (ie injuries slowing him down and Joe Sacco existing), and really it makes me sad that all of our best players' careers have ended the way they have. Sakic's last season was about ten games long and ended by a combination of an old man injury and a freak injury that came in what is unquestionably our worst season, Forsberg left the team before he began to decline but then became a sideshow afterwards as he constantly tried to do what his body couldn't, and then when he finally gave up the ghost it came after two games where he looked the best player on the team (man, him feeding Duchene was filthy) and then it was made worse by us losing like 9-0 to Calgary the next game, Foote could barely move by the time he was done and The Best Final Shift in Hockey as Kyle Keefe deigns it didn't do him justice, even though I remember grinning from ear to ear as I was watching it.
Of course, in remembering the less than glorious end-times of these players, it's important to remember what they were able to achieve. I hadn't realised he was the only guy to play more than 1,000 Avs games (and to the person saying they value this more than a Sakic or a Foote who played for Quebec, I get what you're saying, but even if it were relevant those guys meant more to the Avalanche than Hejduk, and that's not a knock on the Duke), and I think that spoke to how he played the game. He wasn't a game breaker, he wasn't a consistent star as a lot of people seem to be insinuating (even in the 50 goals year Forsberg should take a lot of the credit), but he was a player who was still important to the team, there was an elegance to his play which suited virtually everyone he played with. He was always a threat when he played, a shot that was overshadowed by having Sakic on the team that could score from anywhere (case in point - I still remember the second game of the season in 11-12 where we beat Boston 1-0 away (also the first game where I saw Varlamov and I said "that's it, that's the guy") and he scored the only goal five hole on Thomas with a shot so quick that it was in before you even knew it had left his stick), and that's what everyone including his team-mates seem to have been saying, a consistent class of person coupled with class of player that made him both a threat on the ice and one of the best people we could hope to have representing our team in the process.
Towards the end of his career I'd hoped his drop in offense could be made up for with a switch to a Jere Lehtinen type-role in terms of defensive play, but it wasn't to be. As I said before it's a shame the way his career ended, but I'm still glad he'll go down as having only played for us. If there's a person we could have as a model for what Avalanche players should be, you'd be hard pressed to find someone to compare to Hejduk. We should be thankful for that, and hopeful that we can get players in the future who compare to what he was able to achieve.
