The Eurolanche book (2.)
Eurolanche will be gradually publishing the entire book about its history via its website throughout the summer.Early fandom and my first Stanley Cup
„Why did you become a fan of the Colorado Avalanche?
I’ve been asked this question a lot throughout the years. Either from Eurolanche members, or from European and North American media, which interviewed me several times. I’ve asked other fans of the team from Denver the same question. The answers are often the same and can be divided into several categories.
I’ve played NHL 98, I liked their logo and Peter Forsberg on the cover of the game. I began to collect hockey cards and chose Colorado.
Sakic and Forsberg were phenomenal at the time, so I started to root for them. I’ve been following the Nordiques, because the Stastny brothers used to play there.
Most of the time, it was mere coincidence. Only a handful of European fans rooted for Quebec, let alone follow their games and managed to stay fans of a single franchise up until now. First and foremost, technology in those days didn’t allow Europeans to follow the NHL in such capacity as today. Additionally, the entire Eastern bloc, from the Czech Republic, the former German Democratic Republic, through Slovakia to present Russia was cut off from the rest of the world. Physically, due to ruthless border controls, and due to the lack of information – it was forbidden to follow foreign news broadcasts.Only a fraction of up-to-date information and news came through to people from the Eastern bloc. From time to time, scores of Quebec Nordiques games were published in the local communist sports newspaper. Following the famous defection of the Stastny brothers, the team (and of course, they themselves) became taboo. This is why it’s almost impossible to speak of any tradition or perseverance in the case of European Colorado Avalanche fans, which is more common among European football (soccer for North Americans) fans.
Coincidence also played an important part in my case. I didn’t grow up in a sports family. Yes, I watch sports at home on our TV, but that was it. The times when my grandmother used to go figure skating with both her daughters were long gone by the time I was born in 1990. I wasn’t really interested in sports until I was ten. Then, something happened, which changed my life forever.
In case you’re interested in the unabridged, colored PDF version of the book, contact us at eurolanche@eurolanche.com. The physical copies are all sold out.
I think it was around the time of summer of 2000, when my mother first allowed me to go play by the apartment building my grandmother lived in on my own. I met a peer, an Afro-American boy. I’m not trying to be racist by highlighting the color of his skin. At the time, not a lot of dark-skinned people lived in Slovakia. Society was way wilder than it is today. I remember that when fans of the local football club (Artmedia Petrzalka) were going from their homes to the stadium and back, he was forbidden to go outside, because his skin color would attract the unwanted attention of football hooligans and skinheads.
Not only did I befriend a black boy, which was rare in those times, but it was him, who first told me about the Colorado Avalanche, although I don’t really remember the details. It‘s strange that I know that I experienced something, but feel the memories from my early childhood slowly fading from my memory simultaneously. I’m certain that it had to be during one of our street hockey games. I don’t know how I had a hockey stick in my hand, nor why did I want one in the first place. It’s likely that I viewed it simply as a part of playing sports outdoors. I sure didn’t think about any teams back then. Fun fact: I was initially a left-handed shot, which is natural for a right-handed person. I likely broke my stick and my grandfather bought me a new one with Dominator (a reference to Dominik Hasek) written on it.The stick was for a right-handed shot, which is more practical for left-handed people. Despite this, I learned how to play with it and have played with these kind of sticks ever since. I still write with my right hand, but I can also write with my left one. Is it because of this event?
I remember my friend telling me about some Colorado team and some guys named Sekik, Fosbeg and Roj. I don’t know how long it took me until I learned how to spell the names of these legends properly. And that is how I became fan of the Colorado Avalanche that day.
After I learned that some Colorado team existed, I started to look for more information. There weren’t many options. I didn’t even know the word internet back then. I didn’t have a computer at home, only at my grandmother’s and even that one didn’t have an internet connection, nor did it have any games and was only used for her accounting stuff. I began to use the internet two years later, in 2002. Up until then, my search for information about the Colorado Avalanche and my fandom was limited to the only available source – the ProHockey magazine and the teletext of Slovak TV channels.
I got my first issue of ProHockey, which was is being published since 1999 until now in three languages (Swedish, Finnish and Czech, with the Czech incarnation of the magazine being also published in Slovakia), in October 1999. It was the season preview issue, which most likely led me to play street hockey. For many years, this magazine was the source of valuable information, which I wouldn’t have found anywhere else without internet access – season schedules, current rosters, injury news and transactions, analyses... It’s almost laughable that I was satisfied with a monthly dose of news, which often weren’t even up-to-date, as they were published and printed a month ago. The times were different back then and I didn’t even dream about the technology we have today.
The most up-to-date source of information during my early days as an Avalanche fan was the teletext. Does the generation born after 2000 even know what it is? I still remember the teletext sites of the Slovak Markiza TV channel even though I haven’t opened them for a long, long time. 261 for the recent scores, 262 for the standings and 263 for the stats. From my conversations with other fans, I know that the vast majority of them remembers them just as well as I do.
Teletext was a phenomenon. I’ll never forget how nervous I was when I woke up before school, turned on the TV, immediately switched to the teletext, typed in the numbers 261 and waited until the site loaded. The sites didn’t load right away as they do nowadays. It all took extremely long, everything had its time. It was even worse when a lot of games were played in one day, because the entire 261 site had more subsites, which automatically changed in certain intervals. Even if you finally got the 261 sites, it was possible that you were on the third subsite, while the score of the Avalanche game was on the second one. Then you had to wait for what felt like an eternity until you finally saw how your favorite team fared in their last game. That’s why I was nervous during each game day, or more specifically each morning before I went to school.
It felt like the Stone Age. Again, I have to confess that I can’t really recall the first score of an Avalanche game I looked up on the teletext. I think it was a game against the Washington Capitals and the game was played in Washington in front of less than 14,000 fans. According to archived data, it was October 17, 2000 and Colorado won 4-3 (they were up 2-0, then they were down 2-3, with the goals being scored by Tanguay, Hejduk, Sakic and Forsberg). I didn’t even know the Avalanche had one of the best teams in the NHL. I didn’t know who was on their roster. I started slowly, but steadily. I began to write down all the scores with all goal scorers without the names of the players who recorded assists on them into a small, simple notebook. Once again, I have to stress that the internet was still a big unknown for me and there was no other way how to look up older scores. That’s why I had to write them down each morning in order to avoid them being lost once the teletext was being prepared for the following game day. Sadly, this notebook, my proof of the start of my Avalanche fandom, became lost. I tried to find it a couple of times, but unsuccessfully. I still have a reward – a Joe Sakic jersey – written out for whoever finds it. It’s invaluable to me. Will you help me find it?
The 2000-01 season was also my first year of grammar school in Bratislava. Debates with peers about sports made my fandom even greater. We talked trash, argued whose team is better and compared scores of our favorite teams and players. That’s likely why I remained loyal to Colorado, even though I still didn’t see any of their games. Not even a highlight video. At that time, I made my last futile attempt to play ice hockey. I took some coins (we still had Slovak crowns at the time) and went to the nearest phone booth (yes, they still existed back then). I looked up the phone number of HC Slovan Bratislava, the biggest hockey club from my town, in the phone book and called them to ask if they’re recruiting new 10-year-old players. I don’t know what answer I got, nor with whom I spoke, but I remember that my mother wasn’t very keen on the idea, because she couldn’t have covered the costs. The dream of a professional hockey player, who would one day make it on the cover of ProHockey, was gone in an instant.
I continued to write down the scores during the following months. I learned how to properly spell the names of the league’s biggest stars. I made licenses with their names. Despite limited options, I slowly started to get a good, but not great overview of the NHL. And then it happened. The Colorado Avalanche made it to the 2001 Stanley Cup Finals.
It was nerve-racking to wait every morning until the teletext page loaded. It felt like I was watching Game 7 of the playoffs. Colorado dominated, yet sometimes unnecessary complicated its way to the Holy Grail of hockey. And then we got to Game 7. Truth be told, not everyone was in the same situation as I, as the first sports pay-per-view sports channels began broadcasting several NHL games, including the Finals (the Czech Television began to broadcast the first NHL games in my region in the mid-90’s, which also included the 1996 Finals series between the Avs and the Florida Panthers). But we didn’t have any pay-per-view channels back then. It was way too expensive and we didn’t have the money for that. That’s why Game 7 was just like any other game for me.
“Colorado won,” announced my father to me at about 6 a.m.
I looked at him, half asleep, from the top of my bunk bed and asked him, almost doubting the news with my tone: “They’ve won the Stanley Cup?”.
„Yes,“ was his answer.
I was certainly happy, but surely not as happy as I would’ve been several years later, or today, after I’ve lived through so much more. I immediately went to make sure it was true and looked it up on the teletext. The green, blinking letters formed a clear message – that Colorado was the new Stanley Cup Champion. I didn’t know about the emotive Cup handoff from Sakic to Ray Bourque for some time.
And that’s how my first season with the Colorado Avalanche came to an end. After a while, I got my hands on an issue of ProHockey with Sakic and Bourque on the cover. I still have it today and it has immense value to me. The issue came with a poster – a photo of the Stanley Cup Champions on one side and a shot of Ray Bourque on the other. I wouldn’t have done it today, but back then, I cut out the cover so I could have the small poster of Sakic on the inside and with that,damaged the entire issue and made it practically worthless. I got my hands on the undamaged original issue in early 2017, when I bought 10 of them directly from the archives of ProHockey’s editorial staff. It was like a miracle when Editor-in-chief Petr Novotnyľ found them in near-perfect condition for me. It felt like 2001 all over again.
Although success came really early, and I didn’t even get to enjoy it as much as I would’ve liked, but its most likely one of the main reasons why I remained loyal to this club during the following years and seasons.
Commercial Break: Colorado lost, so I fell ill
We always compared the results of our favorite teams with my classmates in grammar school. The feeling of going to school in June 2001 was priceless. Sadly, it never came back. The mornings I found out Colorado has been eliminated from the play-offs were tough. That’s when I used to „get sick“ and miss at least one day of school. It’s almost unbelievable that my mother tolerated all this and that it was in such an official manner. Did she really believe me? I’m not even sure I went to school on a single day I found out the Avalanche have been eliminated from the post-season and lost their chance to win a Stanley Cup. I remember one premature end to Colorado’s play-off hopes in particular. I really fell ill that morning and had to stay at home for a week. The Stanley Cup fever turned into a real one.
The Eurolanche book (1.)
Eurolanche.com, Worldwide, eurolanche@eurolanche.com
18/07/2018 - 21:51
