Denver Post August 11th 1995

For nearly three months, Joe Sakic, the captain of the former Quebec Nordiques, found that people only wanted to know one thing from him.

"All my friends and everybody else kept asking me, "What's the name? What's the name?"' Sakic said. "I said, "I didn't know. We'll have to wait and find out."'

It turned out that waiting for the new NHL team to be named was like waiting for Godot. But the wait finally ended yesterday.

Sakic and the rest of his teammates will be known as the Colorado Avalanche. Shawn Hunter, the vice president of marketing for Comsat Entertainment Group, unveiled the Avalanche's logo and color scheme at the Westin Tabor Center.

With burgundy red and steel blue as the primary colors and a wavy-looking snow-swirl coming down a giant "A," Hunter showed the result of Comsat's work of nearly 90 days.

"It's too bad there wasn't much interest in this thing," Hunter said sarcastically. He fielded several hundred suggestions on a name after the Nordiques were purchased by Comsat May 25. "The nicest thing is we can stop answering the phone, "Colorado NHL."'

As Sakic said, "Now, we can finally start thinking about playing hockey."

And that seemed to be a relief to everybody involved in the sometimes arduous naming process. After almost 15,000 calls and faxes from the public suggesting names, Hunter said it will be nice to move on to other projects.

The decision to call the team the Avalanche was reached about two weeks ago, Hunter said. Comsat management at first entertained ideas of having "Rocky Mountain" as a first name, but they felt Colorado was "more appropriate."

Hunter said the team's colors were decided well before Comsat decided on Avalanche. Everybody involved with the group seemed particularly pleased with the burgundy-red color, which Hunter said is only being used by the Washington Redskins.

"Everybody we've talked to thinks burgundy is going to be the hot color of the '90's," Hunter said. "There was a lot of research done on it. We think we're the first team in pro sports to have it as our primary color."

The logo, which will have four different variations, went through 30 to 40 different designs before director of creative services Dan Price settled on the final rendition.

"The hardest thing was the snow," Price said. "It took awhile to get a design that made it look realistic, but I think it does now. We brought a puck in at the end as a place for it to stop. We were always working around a design that would have an "A' as the centerpiece, though."

David Haney, a marketing official with the NHL, thinks the logo will be a good seller for the league. Sales of NHL merchandise totaled $1.2 billion last year, an almost 600-percent increase from 10 years ago.

"It'll be a strong mark, not only regionally, but nationally, too," Haney said. "One of the key things for success with merchandising sales is success on the ice. This team will be very successful."

Reaction to the name and logo around town seemed mostly positive. David Marstons of Denver said he liked the colors, but wished the team was called the Denver Avalanche.

But John Flannery, a self-proclaimed "hockey purist" from Massachusetts, said the logo is "hokey, not hockey" and said the look is a disappointment after such a long wait.

"It's too cutesy-looking for hockey," he said. "It belongs in basketball or something."

Training camp for the Avalanche starts Sept. 10, and opening night is Oct. 6 at McNichols Sports Arena against the Detroit Red Wings.

"Now we just have to perform on the ice," general manager Pierre Lacroix said. "We'll try to bring an avalanche of thrills."