Josh Kroenke has been promising Avalanche fans a pony for Christmas since 2017. So you’ll forgive them for rolling their eyes, collectively, whenever they hear about a new practice facility from the horse’s mouth.

“Yeah, we’re in talks with a couple of different groups. A project that big, we just got to make sure we do it right, because we don’t want to have to redo anything down the road. But they are fun conversations.”

That was Josh, on building new facilities.

In 2017.

“We have the land around the arena, and over at Elitch Gardens. We’re part of a master plan there to develop that out, and the first phase of that will include, most likely, an Avalanche and Nuggets facility. … But there’s a lot that goes into that. We’re working as fast as we can.”

That was also Josh, also on building new facilities.

In 2022.

So you’ll forgive the army of cynics up in the Grading The Week offices for chuckling and shaking their heads when Josh, when asked about one of the best franchises in hockey still practicing in a local rec center with a giant arcade on the ground floor, said this to the cameras:

“There’s one final hurdle that we’re in and we hope to have some information relatively soon. But again, we’re dealing with the city, and we’re working on pedestrian access over Speer, in and around that. I don’t have an exact time frame, but we’re very close.”

That was this past Thursday. Also Josh. Also on new facilities.

In 2026.

Josh Kroenke’s practice facility promises — C

The kindest thing we’ll say about KSE and some overdue buildings for the Avs and Nuggets to call home — or, heck, even one facility for the pair of them — is this:

We’ll believe it when we see it.

It never ceases to amaze the basketball guys and gals on the GTW crew who’ve worked in other markets how a franchise with one of the 10 best centers to ever play the game (Nikola Jokic) basically shoots, trains, and lifts weights in this teeny-tiny space just above floor level at Ball Arena. We’ve seen church basements with larger, dedicated basketball and CYO spaces and better facilities than the Nuggets’.

And yet the basketball side of Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, or KSE, is palatial compared to its NHL counterparts down the road.

The Avalanche have won three Stanley Cups since 1996. That’s tied for the second-most in the NHL (Detroit — boo, hiss — has four) over the last 30 years.

And yet the directions for getting to the Avs’ locker room at the South Suburban Family Sports Center sound like something lifted from the movie “This Is Spinal Tap:” Go past the climbing wall in the lobby, veer left at the arcade and go up the steps. Yet they’ve been there since 1998. It feels like 1998. Actually, the whole thing feels incredibly bush league.

Ex-Nuggets voices staying classy while being stiffed by KSE  — A

We say this a lot in the GTW offices, but Scott Hastings is a better man than us. At least in front of a microphone.

“The young Scott Hastings probably would’ve thrown a fit, been upset, cussed people out, gone on the radio today and said, ‘You Em-effers,’” Hastings, the now-ex TV analyst for the Nuggets, said during his mid-day radio show on 92.5-FM earlier this week. “But it doesn’t do anybody (any) good. It’s not helpful.”

That said, we wouldn’t have blamed him for dropping a few expletives into the conversation. The Kroenkes did all their broadcast crews dirty, but especially those on the TV side, by squabbling with the even more stubborn jerks at Comcast in recent years. As a result, two of KSE’s best teams, the ’21-22 Avalanche and ’22-23 Nuggets, won championships in the NHL and NBA, respectively, while local broadcasts of their games were unavailable on many television sets in their home market.

Chris Marlowe deserved better. Hastings deserved better. So did Post alum Chris Dempsey, who, as anyone who’s met him will tell you, is an even better dude than he is a reporter and analyst. And that’s saying something.

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