Eurolanche

The beginnings of Eurolanche

I began the first part of this book, the I. Period, with the question“Why did you become a fan of the Colorado Avalanche?”. Aside from that, people have been constantly asking me “Why did you found Eurolanche?”. Both answers have something in common: there’s no deeper meaning. I became a Colorado fan by pure coincidence without any goals or visions and I also founded the Fan Club more or less by coincidence, without any vision for the future and what could possibly become of it.

The inspiration to connect European Avalanche fans was their internet community, specifically on the message board on the team’s website. Nowadays, I can find a person to talk about hockey either on Facebook or on the Eurolanche website in less than three seconds. Ten years ago, the only place where Avs fans gathered was the aforementioned message board. At least for me. I spent hours there. As well as in the chatroom on NHL.com. In 2002, when I began to use the internet, I spent a part of my holiday in Mallorca in an internet café. In the middle of summer, during major heatwaves, I chatted about hockey and about the upcoming season. The willingness to chat and learn English was still there in 2007. Again, it was summer, there were almost no hockey news, because it was the beginning of August, when there’s literally nothing going on in the hockey world. There was room for other topics. Everyone was looking to pass the time and couldn’t wait for the start of the new season.

During one of those days, I got the idea to connect and gather all European Colorado Avalanche fans into one fan club. We were a strong community on the official Avalanche message board, but we certainly weren’t the majority. Other fans were mostly on other, smaller website, often non-English. How about bringing them together?

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.

 

My initial goals were to connect the existing European community, which could discuss hockey in one place and help each other with tips, like how to watch Avalanche games. Although it was 2007, there still weren’t many options how to watch your favorite team, let alone watch them live. No NHL GameCenter, no NHL.TV existed back then. The ESPN Player pioneered online live streaming, but it came later. Up until then, we had to rely on local sports channels. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, local channels only broadcasted about 10 Colorado games per season. We were more or less forced to watch illegal online streams. And that’s what I wanted from the new community of European fans – to share tip show and where to watch Colorado games and, with time, pressure the NHL to legally distribute their product in our countries. I had no other expectations.

On August 12, 2007, I announced the creation of the first European Fan Club of the Colorado Avalanche on the message board. It had no name, nor a logo.That’s why I called upon my fellow European colleagues to come up with ideas. Within a few days, we chose Eurolanche as the name of the Fan Club and chose its logo shortly after – the letter E with an avalanche in the style of Colorado’s primary logo. I can’t recall who came up with the name and the logo after all those years. I think that a fan from Macedonia played a vital role in either the name or the logo, but I’m not sure at all.

In miracle-like fashion, during the preparation of this book, I managed to get my hands on the historically first post from August 12, 2007, with which I more or less announced the creation of Eurolanche. You can see the original in the attached picture, along with my then-very basic and very bad English, which, thanks to hockey, improved over time.

The second key event was the very first trip of the Eurolanche Fan Club. Following the creation of the Fan Club, I got in touch with Filip from Croatia. He was planning a trip to Bratislava with his parents. We met and he slept at my place for a night. We watched an Avalanche game on my small PC monitor. It was the first time I watched Colorado play with another fan. We agreed that I’ll visit him in Zagreb, Croatia, which I did. In a few weeks, I was supposed to board a train from Bratislava to Vienna, then take a train to Slovenia, where I was supposed to catch the last train to Zagreb. I almost didn’t make it out of Bratislava.

My mother took me to the small train station in Petrzalka, a neighborhood of Bratislava. It seemed like my train didn’t even exist. It wasn’t listed on any board and the employees weren’t helpful either. Once again, I have to say that I had no mobile internet. What now? I ran to my mother, who was already in her car, put my luggage back in the trunk and we drove to the gas station. Not only to refuel the tank, but to buy an Austrian vignette and a map of Vienna, so we could find the train station (Mobile navigation? Are you kidding?). On the road to Vienna, we went over the speed limit several times on our small Daewoo Matiz. It would take about an hour by train. We made it in 35 minutes. When we arrived in Vienna, my mother parked the car and I opened the map to look for the train station. It was early in the morning, it was still dark and I was stressed out. There was no chance. Time was running out. We tried to go in one direction, but didn’t have any luck. The ticket, the prize of which would today equal about 100 euro, was in danger of becoming a worthless piece of paper. Out of nowhere, a taxi driver appeared. I jumped into his car and my mother followed us with my luggage. If I was to miss the train, she would at least take me back home. I quickly jumped out of the car, say goodbye to my mother and ran through the entire station. I found the train, immediately boarded it. The train moved the exact second I went in. At the time, I had no idea that I would experience similar moments during each trip organized by Eurolanche. Either stress from late planes, connections, or running from point A to point B in Denver in order to manage everything we wanted to see. I’m grateful that my mother allow 17-year-old me to go on such a trip, considering it wasn’t just a trip to a nearby city. I had no experience with travelling back then. Furthermore, I went alone only two days past Christmas. Thanks to her trust and support, I was able to get Eurolanche going and to organize other events without any problems.

The journey to Zagreb through the snowy Austrian landscape resembled a scene from a fairytale. I transferred to another train in Slovenia, in the Zidani Most village, where there’s nothing except a little train station. I waited two hours in the middle of nowhere, mostly in the little station shop. I took the last train to Zagreb, with Filip and his mother already waiting for me. I spent four nights at their place. The food from Christmas they had could last for another year. Filip showed me the few hockey places in Croatia, an exotic country in terms of hockey. I attended a local hockey game. I met a Croatian hockey legend by chance (it wasn’t Joe Sakic). We went to a hockey bar. We walked through the streets of Zagreb. It was the trip of trips for me, a truly wonderful experience. What’s more important, Filip supported my idea of organizing trips for European fans to Colorado, which I realistically began to think about right there in Zagreb. It’s almost ironic that the entire Eurolanche Invasion project was created in Croatia! Following several long discussions about the direction the Fan Club could go in the future and a number of nightly games, my small, yet important journey came to an end on New Year’s Eve, which I spent back home in Bratislava. You can bet that I couldn’t miss Colorado’s game against Arizona, which sadly ended in a shootout loss for the Avs.

Full of inspiration, I began to look for new directions the Fan Club could head in its inaugural season. The website was in dire need of change. Eurolanche couldn’t remain stuck with its makeshift website in an era, where every project had to have a nice and fully-functioning website. That’s why I started to raise money for a new website with its own domain – Eurolanche.com. The costs weren’t too high compared to the costs today, but I couldn’t finance it on my own. As an editor for NHLpro.cz, I only had a monthly salary of 1,000 Slovak crowns (33 euro). My salary rose with time and was joined in with money I earned for refereeing games, but it still wasn’t nearly enough. That’s why I tried to launch a public fundraiser everywhere I could think of. Some of the initial members took it as far as to verbally assault members who didn’t want to donate money and I had to calm them down and distance Eurolanche from it. In the end, the planned sum was successfully raised thanks to a number of founding members, to whom I am eternally grateful.