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Following the hot trend, Joe Sakic joins the Avalanche front office

Joe Sakic

Throughout his career with the Quebec Nordiques and Colorado Avalanche, Joe Sakic has been a leader and a role model for the players on the ice. As the captain of the two-time Stanley Cup champion Avalanche, Sakic showed that he’s got the ability to lead the way and do so while under tremendous pressure. Now he’ll use those skills that he had on the ice and put them to use off the ice much like his contemporaries have done as well.

Sakic was named the Executive Advisor/Alternate Governor for the Colorado Avalanche, a front office position that sees him following in the footsteps of Steve Yzerman and Cam Neely as team executives. Yzerman is the GM of the Lightning while Neely is a vice president with the Bruins.

For Sakic, this little bit of news helps boost the spirits in Denver. The Avalanche are currently the second worst team in the NHL and while they’ve done well in their last couple of games, they’re locked in a battle with Ottawa for that spot just outside of the absolute basement behind Edmonton.

While Sakic’s job isn’t like Yzerman’s in that he’s got to help build and shape a team, Sakic will be helping with more of the behind the scenes details and helping get the organization in order. Given how much of a roller coaster it’s been for the Avs the last few seasons, stability like that is invaluable to this team.

With this trend of recent former NHLers coming home to roost in either front office jobs for teams now or with the NHL like Brendan Shanahan and Rob Blake have done, we wonder who might be the next former player to wind up getting a high profile job. Many seem to think that Patrick Roy would be a likely candidate as he’s doing similar work in Canada with junior hockey. Personally, we’d like to see Roy do it just for the colorful quotes he’d provide for us.