Colorado Avalanche: My First Avs Game

In November 2017 I finally got to attend my first Colorado Avalanche game in Sweden.

The most difficult thing about being a Colorado Avalanche fan in England is how infrequently I get to watch games live due to the time difference. When the NHL announced a Global Series, and that part of it would include two Avs games in Sweden, of course I knew I had to go.

Going to hockey games is always more fun with friends and it didn’t take much to convince my friends Crystal and Wendy to come with me. Needless to say, once I’d booked tickets, I was very excited.

From July, when I booked the tickets, to November I’m pretty sure I was insufferable to everyone I knew. I talked about the trip a lot, I started a Swedish Duolingo course so I could at least understand the basics and talked about that a lot too.

A friend from the US came to visit in October and I roped her into helping me with a sign to take to the game. (The Colorado Avalanche logo is hard to draw!) Honestly, I’m amazed any of my friends who aren’t hockey fans are still talking to me.

But, finally, November arrived and my friendships were still intact. It was time for me to leave. I decided to get into the mood early by staying in a Scandinavian themed hotel at the airport the night before.

In order to maximize my time in Stockholm I booked myself onto the first flight out of London. This meant, even though I’d stayed at the airport the night before, I still had to get up at 4am. I do not recommend getting up at 4am.

It was a short flight, less than 2 hours, and soon I found myself in Stockholm. One of the things that stood out almost immediately was how clean and environmentally friendly the city is. The train from the airport into the center of the city proudly announced that it was running on 100% renewable energy.

What I wasn’t prepared for is how huge Stockholm station is. I had instructions from Crystal on how to get to the hotel and still managed to get hopelessly lost. She had to come and rescue me, which was not my proudest moment. But we made it back to the hotel, dropped off my bags and then it was time to do some exploring.

We headed to Old Town first and I was amused that we found a British themed shop pretty much as soon as we arrived. We decided not to go in and buy any Twiglets.

Evidently the Colorado Avalanche social team had the same idea as us as we ended up with an almost identical shot.

We spent a fun afternoon roaming the streets of Stockholm and tweeting the Avs silly pictures that made us think of them.

Soon it was time to get ready for the game so we headed back to the hotel to change into our jerseys and pick up our signs. Never let it be said that I don’t go all in when I’m going to a hockey game: I decided to paint my nails Avs colors too.

We’d made plans via Twitter to meet up with some other Avs fans in a bar near the arena but in our excitement we were early so we decided to have a drink and watch some hockey on the TV.

Eventually someone from the group found us and I was gifted with a puck that had come from Denver. It’s now part of my ever growing puck collection.

I’ve been to lots of fan conventions over the years so I’m well practiced in meeting up with strangers to talk about a shared interest. We talked about where we’d all come from, what we’d been doing in Sweden, our fave Avs players. Everyone was so friendly and it didn’t feel like I’d just met these people. That’s one of the best things about being a fan of something; you can make immediate and long-lasting friendships.

We were chatting away when, suddenly, a voice next to me started chanting, “LET’S GO AVALANCHE.” I turned to see who it was and did an actual double take because it was Kyle Keefe. Next thing I knew there was a camera crew and a photographer there and Kyle was getting us all to chant. It was surreal but definitely got us in the mood for the game. We filmed a small segment that was going to be aired in Denver before one of the Avs games. Unfortunately, not living in Denver, I never got to see it, but being included was fun.

Crystal was very excited to meet Marc Moser because they talk on Twitter a lot. They had a chat and then I took a photo of them together for her.

After that excitement it was time to head to the game. I wasn’t entirely sure where our seats were as I’d booked using my phone and the site was in Swedish with no translate option. I just picked the block we wanted to sit in and hoped for the best. Turned out I’d got lucky and our seats were really near the front.

We were early even for warmups so we passed the time excitedly tweeting at the Colorado Avalanche social media person.

When warmups finally started we realised we were at the Senators end of the ice and had to quickly head down to where the Avs were on the ice so we could hold up our signs. It was here that things got interesting again. Someone came over and asked if they could take a photo of us with our signs for social media. I knew it wasn’t the Avs social media person because I’d seen them earlier, but I didn’t catch where this person was from. Still, we agreed.

https://twitter.com/hils_k/status/929058014925029376

Lucky for me Avs Nation was on the case and it wasn’t long before someone replied and said the photo was for the NHL Snapchat which was pretty amazing.

And our signs will live on as fuzzy blobs in the background of this photo of Sam Girard’s first game on the Avs roster.

The game itself was a lot of fun to watch. Nail Yakupov scored the first goal for the Avs and, as he is one of my favorites on the roster, this made me very happy.

The atmosphere was incredible. Usually when I’m watching Colorado Avalanche games I’m at home, by myself, streaming it through my computer. To be surrounded by other fans, all cheering when they scored, and being able to feel the collective excitement and hope is like nothing I can describe. And, as much as being able to see the game in person was amazing, it was also fun to see the little things that don’t get shown when a game is on TV.

At one point the Avs mascot and the Sens mascot were pretending to fight right in front of me and it was so funny that for a minute I forgot I was there to watch the game.

The game ended up going to overtime, which was a first for me at games I’ve attended in person. Overtime is even more stressful when you’re actually there. I could almost feel the whole arena holding their breath while we waited for someone to score.

Sadly the Colorado Avalanche lost, but in a way the final score didn’t really matter. Yes, we were disappointed, but at the same time we were all just so excited to be there. And the excitement wasn’t over yet.

After the game we headed back to the sports bar where we’d met before the game. We hadn’t been there long when one of our group spotted that Mikko Rantanen had come in to see his family who were eating there. He was kind enough to come over and say hello to us afterwards.

He was clearly tired, having just finished playing an overtime game of hockey, but he was really nice. He asked us all where we were from and chatted to us a bit about the game before letting us all take pictures with him. It was my first experience meeting an NHL player and I honestly have nothing bad to say about him.

By this time I’d been awake for almost 24 hours but it had been such a fantastic day I didn’t even care, and there were more adventures to be had the next day.