Last week, when I covered Avalanche games in Edmonton and Calgary, and I noticed the swarms of media members posing questions to Colorado coach Joe Sacco and the players, it hit me:

The Avs' shockingly fast start was a bigger story in Canada than it was in Denver.

Granted, I've visited Canada for more than 30 years to cover the NHL. I long ago learned that the guy who usually takes the faceoffs is the centre; that Tim Hortons is where you go for an apple fritter and coffee; that walking a kilometer in minus 10-degree Celsius weather can be difficult; that Canadian sitcoms generally are better than ours; and that, most of all, hockey is king.

So I understand that there always has been significant coverage of teams coming into the Canadian arenas, whether it was discussion about whether the beleaguered NHL Colorado Rockies would be playing in Denver much longer (they wouldn't be), or stories about the virtual Hall of Fame roll call as the Avalanche's Patrick Roy, Peter Forsberg, Joe Sakic, Rob Blake, and Ray Bourque strolled into the visiting rooms.

Yet this Canadian reception last week seemed different, jarring and illuminating all at the same time.

At least to the North, the Avalanche has been treated as a huge story again.

Craig Anderson, the American-born journeyman, has been the league's top goalie so far. The 18-year-olds, Matt Duchene and Ryan O'Reilly, stuck around, and O'Reilly especially has been a major contributor. Sacco has had the nerve to put his top scorer, Wojtek Wolski, in and out of the doghouse to make a point.

I've never claimed that my prediction record is anything but atrocious, but I wondered if I was being a "homer" when I forecast in the paper that the Avalanche would step up from 15th (last) in the Western Conference last season to 14th this season. The fact is, nobody saw this coming. Even the Avs' best player, Milan Hejduk, admitted that, with the tape recorder on, last week.

In this era, journalists often have skins far thinner than those of the men and women we cover. Because of that, someone might mistake this as passing judgment or taking a cheap shot at my own newspaper or other Denver media outlets. It is not.

It is an acknowledgment that in a month when the NHL team mostly was on the road, when the Rockies were in the playoffs, when Dan Hawkins squirmed on the hot seat, when the Nuggets approached opening night and when the Broncos continued an even more shocking start, the fact is:

The Avs got lost more than they lost.