The Colorado Avalanche are about to slide into downtown Denver with the Stanley Cup.
It's 9 a.m. and the festivities have just begun with music and fun. Fans are lining the streets of Downtown Denver and packing Civic Center Park as they await their newly crowned NHL champion Colorado Avalanche.
The early morning party is at the park, with the celebration parade set to start at 10 a.m.
Ryan Kulpa of Englewood, sporting an Avs jersey featuring a Grateful Dead logo, got there early to make sure he had a good spot. He attended 45 Avalanche games this season, even skipping some Dead & Company shows in Boulder so that he wouldn't miss a playoff game.
"I've been here since 7 a.m. and there's been horns honking on Broadway all morning," he said. "Usually when horns are honking downtown it's for bad reasons. But today you know every horn you hear is for the Avalanche."
Players, coaches, and other members of the organization begin their victory lap at Union Station in the heart of downtown Denver and make their way down 17th to Civic Center Park.
The stage was set up behind the Denver County Courthouse on Bannock Street between Colfax and 13th avenues for the team - and the beloved Cup.
As the parade began winding through the city, Avs captain Gabriel Landeskog and star forward Nathan MacKinnon climbed down and started celebrating with fans at street level. Forward JT Compher threw drinks to fans after climbing off a truck, while goalkeeper Darcy Kuemper sprayed the crowd with a water gun, which may have been filled with more beer than water.
It's been a while since Lord Stanley's Cup was showcased in Denver - 21 years ago to be exact.
For fans catching up to the excitement, there is only one Stanley Cup. Each NHL championship team passing it along from season to season. The Cup stays with the team for the entirety of their championship year - until they either defend or give up their crown and the Cup along with it.
The Cup traditionally spends its year in the championship city taking trips to visit the homes (and sometimes very far away hometowns) of each player and member of the franchise.
This is the third time the Avs have brought home the cup in franchise history, after defeating the two-time defending champion Tampa Bay Lightning, 2-1, in last Sunday's Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final. The Avs won the series, 4-2.
The first two Cup wins came in 1996 and 2001. They bested the Florida Panthers and the New Jersey Devils in the Final those years, respectively.
Scott Keutz has lived in Colorado since 1963 and followed each of the team's championship runs. He said this Avs group was special.
"Those years of fighting the Red Wings with Sakic, and Patrick Roy, and Adam Foote, those guys battled hard. But, I never seen anybody skate like Nathan McKinnon. Ever. The fact that he had that slap shot that he's famous for. [It was] fun to watch him skate his way down the ice and weave his way through people and poke it in at the end is just incredible," Keutz said.
Keutz's daughter Hayley was born just three days before the Avs won in 2001. She got to watch the team win Game 6 and put away the Lightening.
"I was surrounded by Tampa fans and they were making fun of me," she said.
That Game 6 win brought individual accolades alongside the Stanley Cup.
Defenseman Cale Makar's 29 points -- a total of goals and assists -- earned him the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoff MVP. Makar had already picked up the James Norris Memorial Trophy as the league's best defenseman for the season. He is just the third defenseman in NHL history to win the Norris and Smythe Trophies in the same season.
For lifelong fan Andrew Carreira, this year's win was even sweeter than the ones from his childhood.
"It's crazy what they went through to get the Cup. As a kid, you're just a fan," he said. "But as an adult, you realize how hard it is to get the Cup. It means so much more."
We will update this post with more of the Avs excitement as the celebrations continue.
Vic Vela contributed reporting.
