I've been thinking about my reply to this thread for a while, so I hope what follows is coherent.
When the Avalanche first came to Denver, they had it easy. They had a team with some of the best players in hockey who made winning look easy. They were doing this in a city that didn't have much else to cheer sports-wise. And when you've got as many great players as the Avs had for the first 8/9 years, it's easy to be a "first class" organisation. You out out a winning product, and everything else takes care of itself, as has been mentioned in this thead already.
We all know how the cap screwed us, and that's fne. It sucked then and it still sucks now but as a team we had to go through that period, to give everyone involved a sense of perspective. We had to change, at least in the manner of how the team was constructed, and we have. The problem here is that while results started going down, nothing else started going up. I don't know what like Avalanche transparency was like pre-04/05 (quite sad that I can't call that just "lockout," but anyway) and I don't know what they're like as an organisation locally in terms of fan interaction, but from my perspective, the whole thing from top to bottom doesn't care about its fans.
There's no transparency in the operation. We have a coach, them we have a GM and a scouting staff, and then what? We have Joe Sakic somewhere who as far as I can tell has done nothing since taking his made up role within the team (and hey, who better to take an executive position with the Avalanche than a man renowned for not talking to the press), we have a man who seems to have been at death's door for years in Pierre Lacroix who acts as "president," what is he supposed to do in the running of the Avalanche? Why do none of the people responsible for running the Avalanche realise that they're int he 21st century, a time where image is important in maintaining your brand's relevancy? You don't have a team that can gloss over any deficiencies by winning, you need to act positively to keep fans enganged, and that doesn't happen.
There's no sense of accountability that is born out of this wall of silence too.
This Dater piece sums the stuff up pretty well as well as covering other stuff said in this thread re: the media and so on, there's no realism with the Avs. How often does anyone in a position of authority within the Avalanche speak? You have the players and the coaches who fulfill their media duties pre- and post-games, what else is there? The coach is a guy who has to talk his position up anyway, the players on occaision note their failings (Duchene after last night's game as an example which I can't find but which Dater makes reference to again
here) but what else is there after that? You see teams that have stunk for years much longer and much harder than us like Columbus and the Islanders, teams who still realise the importance of keeping fans engaged in the team when the on-ice tproduct does everything it can to drive them away. That's what has never been a part of this team and what it needs more than anything right now.
To sum up, there are parts of this team I trust. I trust the players on the most part and if we had Landeskog, Downie and O'Reilly we would obviously be better off. I trust Sherman as GM (though every day the ROR situation goes on the more points he loses), I trust the scouting staff, and that's about it. I've lost all faith in Sacco. I've long lost faith in anyone above Sherman to bring a shred of accountability to this team, even realism would be nice. And I don't think anything is going to change until someone up there realises that these things have to change.
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