The Eurolanche book (10.)
Eurolanche will be gradually publishing the entire book about its history via its website throughout the summer.A season of changes (2010/11)
After 10 years of the Eurolanche Fan Club, I can say one thing: we organized nine Eurolanche Invasions, two of them in one season. We didn’t make it to Denver in just two seasons. During our first season in 2007-08 and in 2010-11. I can’t really judge the historically first Invasion by any higher standards, because I was just getting accustomed to the relations between the NHL and a European Fan Club. But by the time the 2010-11 season came around, Eurolanche already existed for four years. I don’t exactly recall why, but we likely didn’t cross the ocean because of low interest. I also had problems with my budget, because the previous two years and participations in Invasion I and III almost cost me all my student savings. The next Invasion simply couldn’t take part so soon and I began to miss Denver.
The passivity of Fan Club members bothered me even more than the cancelled Invasion. I started to get the feeling that if someone went to Denver thanks to me and the Fan Club, they thought that they didn’t have to do anything for the Fan Club anymore, or that they didn’t have to attend future events and meetings upon returning back to Europe. This approach hurt. Not only did the Invasion not take place, but no one was willing to even meet during a weekend. Why should the Fan Club even exist then? That’s why I’m not surprised by the article I found while writing this book. I forgot about the whole thing. Thanks to an archive search, I stumbled upon its headline, which read “Big change, we announce our new president”. I can’t find the text of the article anywhere on my PC storage. I don’t know what more to write about this. I don’t even know whom I named president. Nor how long this situation went on. As you can see, I returned to being Eurolanche’s President. And I don’t regret it. The scars remained and I began to be more careful. I couldn’t blindly trust anyone. As time passed, I created a handful of rules and a system, which ensured that nothing similar will ever happen. All in all, I still can’t understand human laziness. What can you say about someone who is too lazy to pick up a jersey you’re giving him for free? Everyone’s different and I’m glad that we have had such a great group of people in the editing staff and the formal executive staff of the Fan Club during recent years, which keeps pushing us full steam ahead. I also can’t forget members, who can’t be available on a day-to-day basis due to working obligations, but with whom we still meet and keep in touch. This is what the Fan Club’s all about.
As if it wasn’t enough, the 2010-11 season was the worst season of the Colorado Avalanche since the team’s relocation. At the end of the regular season, the team only had 68 points, the second-lowest total in the league. They drafted second overall, selecting Gabriel Landeskog. The team’s roster no longer included Marek Svatos and Peter Budaj also left after the season. There was no reason for smiles.
Let’s move on to something more positive. One of the positives certainly was the member meeting in the second half of the season, in spring 2011. My dark days were over and the group for the Eurolanche Invasion IV slowly began to take shape. Seven of us arrived at the meeting near Trencin, Slovakia. We did a lot of sports and I even tried what it’s like to be a real ice hockey goalie. We also played NHL on PlayStation and chatted. Furthermore, we managed to select the logo of the fourth Invasion from a number of proposals.
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.
With summer knocking on the door, I began to work on a new project. Due to the previously mentioned reasons, I decided to once again change the Fan Club’s main website. I decide to supervise the development even closely and held on to the idea, which I had prior to the launch of the previous website – to create a website, which would represent the Fan Club with its identity, but which would also provide coverage of the Avalanche, which wouldn’t unnecessarily possess a complicated structure and interfere with the main website. There’s beauty in simplicity. We’ve been using the website ever since, six years in total. Prior to each new season, we come up with slight improvements and changes. I don’t see a reason why we should change anything in the near future.
Together with the new website, we also presented its mobile version m.eurolanche.com, which lost its meaning with the arrival of smartphones. The subsite invasion.eurolanche.com, which underwent a significant change in 2014, is still an integral part of the website. On the welcoming page, the site shows FAQs about the project for potential participants, as well as depicting the nine organized Invasions. There’s a picture and some information about the participants with a link to diaries in various languages, photo and video galleries, as well as the final summary. During an Invasion, the website also contains an embedded Twitter window, thanks to which we can provide our readers with live broadcasts.
I’d also like to mention the subdomain fannight.eurolanche.com, which is surely forgotten even by the Fan Club’s most tenured members. The main idea of the project was to unite all fan sites from Slovakia and the Czech Republic in order to create joint game coverages. For example, if Philadelphia played against Colorado, one editing staff would write the game’s preview, while the other one would write the summary, with both staffs then writing a commentary of the game. Aside from that, mutual cooperation and propagation could head into other directions in the future. The project was unsuccessful for a single reason – other Slovak and Czech fan sites shut down with time, or kept changing constantly. There’s only asinglefansiteolderthanEurolanche–aCzechNewYorkRangerswebsite, which uses the year 2000 as the year it was established in its masthead.
At the same time, by the end of the 2010-11 season, we began to increase our activities on Facebook. In September 2011, we created our own Twitter account. Although Twitter isn’t very popular in Slovakia, it played a vital role for us in my situations and instances. Looking back at it, our fourth season wasn’t really all that bad.
The season of the Colorado Avalanche: The changes continued. Colorado acquired Erik Johnson in a blockbuster trade with the St. Louis Blues. Goalie Craig Anderson got injured, was later traded and even publicly criticized his former team. Peter Forsberg returned to play two games, after which he definitively retired. The Avalanche management made a number of personnel changes, but it wasn’t enough to get into the playoffs. The Avs finished as the Western Conference’s second-worst team with 68 points.
Commercial break: Dream with us
After all these years of being a Colorado Avalanche fan, I’ve dreamt a lot about anything connected with the club. One time, I was one of their players, or I just dreamt of walking around in Denver. I also had a recurring nightmare of missing my flight to the US. Since the beginning of the Invasion project, I had recurring nightmares about travelling. There’s a particular dream I won’t ever forget because it felt so real, although it‘s really stupid. It was 2003. The All-Star Game between the teams of the Eastern and Western Conference was scheduled to be played at night. I had nowhere to watch the game. Despite the game being meaningless, I was still bummed out. That night, I dreamt that I was walking around one of the city squares in Petrzalka, Bratislava, which had old TVs installed. The people could turn them on and look at the teletext. I also did it. The TV literally shook awake. Suddenly, a result appeared on the screen. I still remember how nervous I felt, because I didn’t know if I was dreaming or not. I wanted to know the real result. Much to my delight, the West in fact beat the East 6-5 following a shootout. Patrick Roy was named the weekend’s best goalie.
Eurolanche.com, Worldwide, eurolanche@eurolanche.com
11/08/2018 - 21:51
