Colorado Avalanche’s Inaugural Fan Fest a Huge Success

The Colorado Avalanche’s inaugural Fan Fest was a big success, making us hope we’ll see more such events in future years.

The Colorado Avalanche held their first-ever Fan Fest today at the Pepsi Center. The fest included some outdoor activities, including a 5K walk and street hockey clinic. Inside was a sale on fan gear and game-used merchandise.

The highlight of the Fan Fest was the on-ice practice.

I’ve long been a proponent of the Avalanche holding a Fan Fest. I had hopes for a Chicago Blackhawks-style festival that included panels of players who might even break into dance — I’d pay very, very good money to see Nathan MacKinnon and Tyson Jost in a dance-off.

As noted, this was technically the first official Fan Fest, but the team has held on-ice practices before at Pepsi Center (notably to reveal the third jerseys three years ago) and they had the Stanley Cup Tour a couple years ago.

Nonethless, today’s event was a success. Around 10,000 Avs fans attended. Everyone had a lot of fun — especially the players. Here’s what our captain, Gabriel Landskog, had to say about the event:

"“It was fun, I think the guys did a good job of kind of showing the fans and to have some fun with it. We are trying to be relaxed, obviously it’s awesome to practice in front of this many fans. It means a lot to us that they came out and supported us on a day like this. I think it was a good overall event, and I hope we can continue to do this.”"

Our captain was a big hit at the Fan Fest:

The practice was run as a Burgundy vs White affair — spoiler alert, Team Burgundy won. One of the things I liked was the announcers described what the drills were that the players were running. I go to practices a lot, so it was good to know some of the specifics of what they were looking for.

Here are some of the other noteworthy tweets from the event:

The Fan Fest culminated in a shootout. All the players on the bench participated. The first couple rounds — and some of the subsequent rounds — were serious. However, about four players in, Colin Wilson busted out some spin-o-rama moves, and that inspired our captain to do this:

Which later inspired our alternate captain to do this:

Yes, he threw his glove at goalie Semyon Varlamov, but Varly is known for keeping a cool head.
Anyway, here’s the prettiest of all the shootout goals:

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see our best player, Nathan MacKinnon, in action because he was having a maintenance day. I think it’s a weird practice for him to miss — the inaugural Fan Fest. However, it is ultimately more important that he rest up for Opening Night. (He also skated ahead of practice and looked just fine.)

Anyway, here’s the shootout in its entirety and some of the drills:

It’s pretty funny at the end how poor Dominic Toninato gets pelleted with water bottles. Good natured, he actually picked up a Gatorade bottle and drank from it.

I think all of the fans hope the Colorado Avalanche Fan Fest becomes a regular occurrence. I’d still really like to see a Q & A panel with some of the players. I think more skills competition, à la the All Star Weekend would also be wildly popular.

What would you like to see at the next Fan Fest?