Former Nordiques great Peter Stastny rips Avalanche management for recent trade

Blockbuster trades always find a way to reverberate through the league in ways. The Colorado Avalanche trade with St. Louis centering around power forward Chris Stewart and defenseman Erik Johnson certainly more than qualified as a blockbuster and opinions on the deal have been varying.

While Erik Johnson was busy saying he hopes he can make the Blues regret they ever traded him away, another figure was looking at things a bit more harshly. Former Nordiques great and hall of famer Peter Stastny sounded off to KMOX radio in St. Louis about what he thought of the Avalanche dealing away Stewart and McClement (audio here) and suffice it to say he’s not very pleased as Adrian Dater of The Denver Post transcribed.

“This young team was ready to challenge, almost, for a Stanley Cup this season. They were so good. All they needed was some more chemistry, and some synergies. Instead, they destroyed the team. I mean, that was a one-way deal. Mr. Armstrong will look like a genius. I don’t know what they were thinking in the Colorado organization. I should not have said this, but I’m so, so mad what they’ve done to this team. They’ve moved the team about two to three years back again.”

All right so perhaps Stastny is wearing the homer hat proudly here. After all, this is his franchise and it’s also the team that employs his son Paul. It’s probable that Peter isn’t exactly looking at things with the clearest of minds for how much his heart is involved in matters, but we haven’t seen anyone in his position speak up so loudly and pointedly about this deal.

Saying that Avalanche GM Greg Sherman “destroyed” the franchise and set them back two or three years because of the deal is some pretty hardcore hyperbole though. Seeing that Stastny cares this much for the franchise is pretty incredible but is he speaking with a clear mind about things? Tough to say as anything that directly affects people in your family, and in this case his own son, makes it all hit home a little harder. This time around, Peter is sounding off like the angry sports dad throwing a tantrum at his kid’s game.

After all, it’s not as if Paul Stastny and Erik Johnson don’t know each other. They were Olympic teammates after all and Dater points out that they were even roommates in Vancouver. We’re sure that won’t make for too awkward of a conversation during the Avs next practice. Colorado runs a really tight ship when it comes to how things are run there and having a franchise icon speak out this way against them makes for quite the fun media circus. Peter Stastny isn’t some nobody after all and as we’ve seen with Mario Lemieux, when a hall of famer speaks out, people pay attention.