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SALT LAKE CITY — If anyone has a reason not to like the Colorado Avalanche, it was a young André Tourigny.
The Utah Hockey Club head coach was 21 years old when his beloved Quebec Nordiques were sold and moved to Denver. And, yes, he still remembers how he felt.
"Not really good," he said with a chuckle. "I was a big Nourdique fan, I can tell you that."
He started thinking of "the great days" watching Peter Šťastný, Michel Goulet and Dale Hunter go on playoff runs in the early 1980s. He remembered the excitement around the rebuild centered around Joe Sakic.
That excitement proved to be justified.
In 1995, the Nordiques moved to Colorado and immediately won the franchise's first Stanley Cup.
Did that fester an ever-burning hatred for the team? Eh, not exactly.
"I always stayed a fan back then," Touringy said.
It helped, too, that a couple of years after the move the Avalanche swung a deal for Quebec native Raymond Bourque. Tourigny said that brought him back on the bandwagon pretty quickly.
Even if there was any leftover ill will from the move, that would have likely ended when he spent two seasons in Colorado as an assistant coach working with Sakic and Adam Foote, another former Nourdique turned Avalanche.
That's all to say that any animosity between Utah and Colorado won't necessarily be coming from Tourigny.
Ever since the Utah Hockey Club was announced, it was assumed a rivalry would develop between the two mountain state teams. Geographically, it just made sense; they are from neighboring states and the only two teams in the Mountain Time Zone.
And the cities have long been connected in a natural competition. Denver and Salt Lake City are prime winter destinations, boasting some of the best ski resorts in the world (Salt Lake's are, of course, much closer to its population center), and both the Wasatch and Rocky Mountains serve as picturesque backdrops.
But geography alone is rarely enough to create a buzzing conflict — something Avalanche fans know all too well.
Upon arriving in Colorado, the team quickly developed a rivalry with the Detroit Red Wings that became one of the most heated in the league.
From 1996-2002, the teams met in the playoffs six times and won a combined five Stanley Cups. That stoked some mighty hot flames. In a March 26, 1997, game in Detroit, the teams combined for 18 fighting majors, and 148 penalty minutes.
So any potential mountain rivalry has quite a bit to live up to.
"I think it just forms from competitive games and teams you play a lot," forward Jack McBain said before the game "They're a really good team. So it'll be another good test for us. I don't know about a rivalry yet, but we'll see."
Things didn't get out to a rousing start on Thursday. The team's first game against each other was a sleeper. Colorado led 4-0 at the end of the end of the second period en route to a 5-1 win — not really the type of game to fuel future discord.
But there's some hope it won't be so one-sided going forward. Even as the Coyotes rebuilt over the last few seasons and the Avalanche were at the top of the league, there were some heated battles.
"Both teams have been going toe-to-toe pretty good in the last couple of years," Tourigny said before the game. "So, I think that (being in Utah) will just bring it that much higher. I think that will be great. We have nothing against that. It's the reverse — we want to create our own territory."
Based on Thursday, though, it looks like they'll need more time to create their own rivalry.
