Love hurts.

• Author: Schley, Stewart
• Position: SPORTS [biz]

Your love is fading. I can feel your love lading.

Can you name that tune?

Bingo! Temptations., 1966. "(I Know) I'm Losing You." Went to No. 8 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart. Great in its original incarnation, but if you really want to dig in, listen to the searing version Rod Stewart and the Faces turned in on the epic 1971 album, Every Picture Tells a Story.

We submit this timeless lament of fizzling romance as the theme song for The Colorado Avalanche, circa November 2009. For it has come to pass that after an extended honeymoon, the torrid tryst of fan and team is, sadly, no more.

It was a beautiful thing while it lasted, wasn't it? Devout and devoted, passionate and consuming. Oh, those first sweet explorations. Learning about each other, encountering unfamiliar worlds. "So that's what offside means!" we would say, and gaze adoringly at the ensuing face-off. It was all so new then. A sultry stranger had walked into town and swept us off our feet. We were dazzled. Flushed. We had butterflies. All our friends could see it. We glowed. We started behaving strangely. We bought jerseys that weren't orange. We stopped putting our children in timeout, and started putting them in the penalty box. We learned a new way to pronounce "Roy."

We were rewarded for our love. We achieved the ultimate coupling: multiple you-know-whats. (Stanley Cups, pervert).

They said it wouldn't last, but it did, Oh, the flame began to fizzle over time, but just when we began to wander, a quiet hero wearing No. 21 would return from afar, and our love would rekindle.

But then.

But then things changed. It's difficult to identify that one moment. There were no raging quarrels, only a steady drain. Players we loved retired. We stopped winning. And there we found ourselves, one evening last winter, and the house was chillier than usual. Not as many people had showed up. A sellout streak we'd presumed would last forever was suddenly no more. You knew what was coming next. Silent recriminations. Long sighs. Fatigue. Second-guessing. Then the steady drag of life itself: bills, layoffs, a weak economy. The expense of going out. We thought twice.

Now, here we are, trying to remain friends. Longing for a return to something that may not come...