Jock Itch Looking ahead: hockey and more work stoppages 

Summertime can get a little slow for Colorado sports fans, and you have to really look to find anything worthy of investing your time in. Luckily there are three things happening in the next week or two that will affect your viewing pleasure for months to come: the NHL draft, the end of the NFL lockout, and the looming specter of an NBA work stoppage.

The NHL holds its annual entry draft this Friday, June 24 in St. Paul, Minnesota. It doesn’t hold the same cachet that the NFL draft does, but this year has specific implications that every Colorado Avalanche fan should take note of. For one, the Avs have two picks in the first round, which is unheard of for the once-mighty team. The Avs pick second and 11th overall in the first round and should add some high-quality players to their talented but bafflingly underperforming squad. With the team desperate for a dominating scorer, most experts are thinking the Avs will go with Gabriel Landeskog, a Swedish power forward. We love our Swedes here in Denver, and another Swede might be on the Avs radar as well: Adam Larsson, a big defenseman. It couldn’t hurt the Avs to load up here as well and, according to Adrian Dater of The Denver Post, the Avs’ signing of Joakim Lindstrom (Larsson’s teammate in Sweden) may mean they are leaning toward the D man. Either way, with two first-round picks, the team can’t go wrong, which will make your winter hockey viewing that much better.

Right now, football fans are starting to sweat out the ongoing labor lockout. What was a minor inconvenience back in April has now turned into a hand-wringing “will there be a season?” stress fest. There’s too much money at stake for both sides to not cash in, so we’re all pretty sure there will be a football season. When it starts is another matter entirely. Any time off the practice field is bad for your Denver Broncos, and as it drags on, the hopeful feeling created in the offseason by John Elway will drain away like an overpriced microbrew at Coors Field. All of the players, including your starting QB Tim Tebow, will need time to adjust to a new coach installing a new system across the board. ESPN football expert and former Denver sports writer Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) at first believed the lockout would wrap up around the beginning of next month, but now he’s not so sure. If it doesn’t get resolved soon, you can kiss another Broncos season goodbye. More importantly, it may have major implications on the upcoming fantasy football season—that’s all we’re really worried about, right?

And as the NBA gets ready to anoint its next round of millionaires in its entry draft (Thursday, June 23, 5 p.m.), that league teeters on the brink of its own lockout. An NBA work stoppage has been looming for years, and now it may happen as early as the beginning of July. No surprise that salary caps and guaranteed money are at the heart of this one, but the scary thing about it is if the NBA season is canceled due to a labor squabble, the league may be decimated. In the NFL, there is no burgeoning football scene in Europe to offer players an alternative venue to utilize their talents. There is for professional basketball players: Basketball is massive in Europe and Asia, and NBA players are planning on picking up and playing over there until the labor problems pass. If there’s no season, the Denver Nuggets may just slip further out of our view as sports fans. Worse, you’ll have one less thing to watch in the fall.