Eurolanche

One for all, all for Eurolanche

Ten years. Ten years of fulfilled dreams. Ten years of unforgettable experiences. Ten years of beautiful memories. Not even in my wildest dreams did I expect Eurolanche to exist as long as to celebrate its 10^th anniversary. And even if I did, I surely didn’t expect that we would return to Denver nine times in total during that span; that NHL legend Jeremy Roenick would do a live interview with me for NBC Sports; or that Joe Sakic would respond to my request ‘Could you, please, sign a poster and dedicate it to me, David?’ with ‘I know who you are’.

The media often use the term dream factory and it’s safe to say that Eurolanche indeed became one. During its 10 years of existence, we organized nine Eurolanche Invasions with the participation of 37 unique participants (54 in total) from 8 European countries, who attended 56 Colorado Avalanche games, with four of them being away games. Furthermore, we held 9 member meetings, 9 meetings with both former and current Avalanche players, and interviewed more than 60 players and people connected with the organization from the Mile High City. We also appeared in all global, North American and European hockey media we possibly could. Everyone, who played a part in this hard, 10-year-long work, either regularly, partially, or even minimally, can be proud of themselves. Thanks to our fantastic work as a team, we made Eurolanche into a brand, which is unrivaled on the entire NHL market.

The book 10 years of the Eurolanche Fan Club tells complete and detailed story of the Eurolanche Fan Club. With these 200 pages, I wanted to elucidate the first weeks and months of the Fan Club’s existence, its turning points, tough times and problems, as well as its greatest achievements not only to our members, but to both hockey fans and sports fans in general as well. This book is a previously unpublished account of Eurolanche’s everyday functioning and a look behind its scenes, which often resembled a chaotic frontline, which we had to navigate through in order to achieve the state we’re in after ten years.

One could compare the Eurolanche Fan Club to a small company, with its story being a good example of achieving the so-called American dream. It’s a story of dedicated hockey fans, who made it from their small bedrooms Europe full of posters, PlayStations, ProHockey magazines and hockey cards all the way to the Pepsi Center to fulfill their dream – to see the Colorado Avalanche play in person.

Since I’ve been present at 99-percent of the events organized by the Fan Club, as well as organizing most of them, I wrote this book as a first-person narrative. I describe all events as I remember them after all these years, including all the positive, as well as negative emotions, which helped shape the future of the Fan Club and all its projects.

Based on the game we love, I divided the book into five parts – I. Period (beginning at the moment I became a fan of the Avalanche all the way to Eurolanche’s first trip to Denver), II. Period (detailing the period between the first and the ninth Invasion), III. Period, Overtime and Shootout. The latter two parts of the book contain “bonus” chapters, which didn’t find their way into the book’s previous parts. Additional bonus material is part of special paragraphs titled Commercial Break, which are scattered throughout each parts of the book. At the end of the I. Period, as well as at the ends of each subchapters of the II. Period are short summaries titled The season of the Colorado Avalanche, which detail how the Avalanche fared during the 10-year existence of Eurolanche.

At first, I hesitated how much to write in the I. Period in order to prevent the book becoming an autobiography instead of a story about Eurolanche. I tried my best to remain brief, only highlighting the moments I considered to be the most interesting. I wanted to avoid overly describing the beginnings of my Avalanche fandom, opting to describe the life of an NHL fan at the turn of the millennium to readers from all over the world instead. I’m certain that most of you had a similar experience as I, which is why the first part of the book isn’t my, but our story – a story of European fans of the world’s best hockey league.

The book as whole is a big mosaic of stories of members of the Eurolanche Fan Club, who had the opportunity to fulfill their dreams throughout the past 10 years. I dedicate it to everyone, who has followed, is following, or will follow our motto from 2007 – One for all, all for the Avs as well as its alternative, after which I’ve named this prologue.

I hope that this story, our story, will continue for another decade.

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