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I remember when the town where I was born won a title way back in 1995 - the greatest sports memory of my childhood.
It is a small industrial steelers town of 30 000 inhabitants, in 94/ 95 they were newcomers to the first league, first time ever the city had any first league sport team.
After the first quarter of the season, one place off the bottom, total underdogs and a team full of players that never made it in other clubs in the league, most of them marked as "not perspective" (including also a future Philladelphia Flyers and LA Kings goalkeeper Roman Cechmanek), plenty of them never even played the top league before.
The best audience in the league - every single game during the season was sold out, no fights and 110 pct. cheering, everybody lost their voice during the match.
Half the stadium full always already one hour before the start, and of course plumbrandy everywhere, then they made the playoffs, since they hadn't lost almost no game at home in the second half of the season and had a major streak at the end.
Then the play offs came, I watched in a thriller every single minute of those matches, one goal wins, overtime wins.
At the end they made it to the finals, which was a total sensation, first game lost 3:6 ,but then a 2:1, 3:1 and 2:1 in overtime (series were yet played on three winning matches) to become the first newcomer in the league to ever win the title.
The whole city filled the home stadium around 3 AM, once they were returning back out of the visitors stadium, mothers, kids, pensioners, everybody was there and it took about another week of major celebrations (well there's quite a know how how to celebrate in the East).
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