"Twice in a Colorado Avalanche sweater, both times with the captain's "C" near his shoulder, Joe Sakic has accepted the Stanley Cup from NHL commissioner Gary Bettman. Now, the face of the franchise is walking away. He will announce his retirement at a news conference Thursday, sources close to Sakic confirmed. In 1996 in Miami, Sakic triumphantly raised the most famous trophy in professional sports. It was notable for many reasons, the most important being that it represented Denver's first major-league championship. In 2001 in Denver, Sakic quickly and deftly handed off the Cup to veteran defenseman Ray Bourque, who had waited years to experience the triumphant moment and get the trophy wet with his sweat and tears. "He'll

go down as one of the best to ever play the game," Hall of Famer Wayne Gretzky said of Sakic. Next season, Sakic's No. 19 will be retired to join those of Patrick Roy (33) and Bourque (77) in the Pepsi Center rafters. In 2012, he'll likely be inducted in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto in his first year of eligibility. He leaves the game as the 14th-leading goal scorer in NHL history, with 625; and as the eighth-leading point producer, with 1,641. Only defenseman Adam Foote, whose Denver tenure was interrupted by a two-plus-season stay with the Columbus Blue Jackets, remains from the Nordiques team that departed Quebec City in 1995 and resettled in Denver. Roy, arguably the greatest "money" goaltender of all time, and Peter Forsberg, who could dominate games with eye-popping strength and skill, at times were as prominent as Sakic with the Avs, and even more so. Yet Sakic, who retires at age 40 after 20 seasons in the NHL, unquestionably was the face of the franchise. "The game just lost one of the best ambassadors that ever hit the ice," said former Avs forward Ian Laperriere. "It was an honor and a privilege to play with such a player and such a classy guy like Joe."

Said Anaheim Ducks star Ryan Getzlaf,

"The only player I kind of wanted to be like was Joe Sakic, that clutch performer that everyone looked to and was able to score goals that win games, and overall, the respect he has." "Quoteless" complimentThe man with one of the game's greatest wrist shots is a North American success story. His father, Marijan, and his mother, Slavica, had journeyed separately from their native land to Canada, where they married and started a family. When he began attending school in the Vancouver area, Sakic already was known for being a young boy of few words, and those few words were in Croatian. "Everybody knew English, and I was just starting to learn it," Sakic recalled. Beginning to play at the local rink, a ramshackle

complex then known as 4 Rinks, he discovered that hockey was Canada's Esperanto - a universal language. "It was the worst place in the world," he said, jokingly, of the rink. Marijan, a stonemason, built a rink in the Sakic backyard. He and Slavica rounded up $300 to buy a family membership