Tag: NHL (Page 2 of 5)

Who Cares if Your Team’s Colors Aren’t Green?

17 March, 2010 / Kat

St. Patrick’s Day has become big business in the sports fan wear industry. It has become commonplace for teams across sports to eschew their traditional colors for the day and promote green and white fan wear and jerseys. All levels of professional hockey have been the biggest to jump on the trend, with special fanwear for sale and given away at games, and special jerseys worn for games played around March 17th. The following are three shirts that caught my eye for various reasons.

NHL: St. Louis Blues

Last night, the St. Louis Blues mixed their St. Patrick’s Day commemoration with environmental awareness, and gave away a “Green Game” t-shirt to all fans in attendance (quite a risky claim to advertise – from personal experience, you should always give an exact number of giveaways, a la “first 5,000 fans”). The shirt giveaway was sponsored by Monsanto, a Cambridge, MA based agricultural innovation company with an emphasis on sustainable practices. This was the second year for the Blues promotion.

Shirt Grade: B I like the muted, antiquey kelly green shirt and faded style of the print. It also helps that the Blues’ team colors happen not to horribly clash with green. Kudos for using that to their advantage and not changing the logo’s colors for the holiday’s sake. Environmental awareness initiatives during games are the new “it” thing to do in sports marketing – trust me, I participate in one – but the giveaway needs to be backed up with sustained, but subtle, green initiatives, otherwise it is just a t-shirt giveaway.

AHL: Wilkes-Barre Scranton Penguins

The Baby Pens (speaking of, we are long overdue for an edition of The Everyone’s Favorite Goalie Watch, but that’ll be another post) are selling two St. Patrick’s Day long sleeve shirts in their online store. The 2009 edition ($20) features their mascot, Tux, skating with a four leaf clover in the background on the front. The back reads “Happy St. Patrick’s Day.” The 2010 version ($22) features the logo in what appears to be a very dark green (nearly black), with a four leaf clover on the sleeve. Long sleeve shirts are always key in that part of Pennsylvania, where the damp gray chilly days seem to out number any other weather.

Grade: C The effort is there, but the execution is not. The 2009 version is too campy, and the 2010 version shows promise, but the green seems too dark. Kudos, however, for the 2010 edition’s four leaf clover on the sleeve.

ECHL: Gwinnett Gladiators

The ECHL Gwinnett Gladiators teamed with Old Time Hockey, the same Salisbury, MA based company who partnered to create some of the NHL’s 2010 St. Patrick’s Day gear, to create a green t-shirt to sell this March. The shirt ($20 with free shipping through today) features a rather disturbed and surly looking leprechaun brandishing a hockey stick, with a small Gladiators logo by his right foot. The all-caps font is rather 1950s style, and arches above Surly Leprechaun’s head.

Grade: A This is the first ever St. Patrick’s Day shirt I would ever consider purchasing, and not just because I’m in the market for a shirt from the team where two of my most favorite former BU hockey alums play. What sold me was the 1950s fonts – I’m a sucker for fonts. Plus, I feel like Surly Leprechaun is going to hurt me with that hockey stick if I don’t like the shirt.

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The World is Not Enough…

27 January, 2010 / Kat

…but seemingly, neither is a Little League World Series, NCAA Championship, Hobey Baker, and Stanley Cup.

While watching the New York Rangers take on the Pittsburgh Penguins Monday evening on Versus, my friend Laurel wanted to look up Rangers rookie Michael Del Zotto’s exact age, so I pulled up the Rangers website on the good ol’ MacMini. A Flash overlay popped up immediately across the bottom of the page – one that included Boston University hockey alum Chris Drury doing his best James Bond impression.

chris drury

The overlay was an advertisement for the Rangers’ Casino Night to benefit Madison Square Garden’s “Garden of Dreams” foundation. The event is February 8th, and it’s for high rollers only – tickets range from $500 to $2000, and attendees must be dressed to impress.

Drury has represented his country in the Olympics, fulfilled every dream of any kid who grew up playing hockey in New England, and now he gets a picture of himself looking like he’s about to order a “shaken but not stirred martini” at a swanky bar splashed across a NHL team’s website. Chris Drury, we salute you. Until Matt Gilroy starts busting Russian spies and jumping from speeding trains, you get the award for being the most Bond of any BU Hobey Baker Winner.

Demoted to Hartford? There’s a Facebook Group for That.

13 December, 2009 / Kat

Matt Gilroy had been named the best rookie in training camp by the Rangers staff just 3 months ago. (Photo: SNY.com)

Wednesday evening, former Boston University captain and rookie New York Rangers defenseman Matt Gilroy was outskated by Chicago Blackhawks right wing Dustin Byfuglien (a last name more difficult than my own) to allow the game-winning goal in overtime.

Thursday morning, Gilroy was summarily dismissed by the Rangers and assigned to the AHL’s Hartford Wolf Pack.

And Saturday evening, I got a Facebook notification inviting me to the group, “Put Matt Gilroy Back on the Rangers.”

“We want to send a message to the Rangers front office that they need to move Matt back up to the NHL!” exclaims the description for the group. Created Saturday afternoon, the group already has 377 members with a wide variety of loyalties. (It grew from 324- 377 while I was writing this blog post.) A few BU teammates belong to the group, quite a few BU hockey fans, some New York Ranger fans, and a large contingent of members with the last name of Gilroy. (Not surprising, seeing that the Gilroy family is rumored to rival the population of Syracuse, New York in numbers.)

As the news of Gilroy’s demotion hit Twitter on Thursday, I learned that Rangers fans are quite opinionated, and were blaming general manager Glen Sather for the move right and left. They were calling for other defensemen, such as Michal Rozsival, to suffer a benching or demotion. Even ESPN anchor Linda Cohn got into the action, tweeting, “Can somebody explain to me why in the world the Rangers would mess with the head of Matt Gilroy and send him down to Hartford?”

In comparison, the Facebook group is pretty mild. A group member actually spoke up to explain why moving Gilroy is easier than demoting a more seasoned player and possibly exposing that player to waivers. Others continue to express anger at Sather, and still others are writing “keep the faith” messages to Gilroy.

Whether Gilroy’s demotion was warranted after his Chicago gaff, or this was a move to get him more playing time, the progression of this Facebook group will be quite interesting to watch. Will Matt Gilroy himself join? Will it catch on further among the Rangers faithful? Or will it go the way of those ubiquitous “I lost my phone – can I have your numbers?” groups?

Hockey-Hockey-Hockey Chameleon

12 October, 2009 / Kat

The Rangers must really want me to like them. I must resist. (Photo: Flickr user Bari D)

Note from 10/16/09: In this piece, I mention at the end that a bunch of my favorite players were picked up by the ECHL’s Charlotte Checkers. Two days after I posted that, nearly everyone was either released or put on injured reserve. So the whole last three paragraphs of this piece no longer makes sense. The rest of it is good though.

I typically despise anything New York City related. An ex-boyfriend dumped me years back because I was from upstate and he was from downstate, and thus the differences were too great to navigate. Rochester-born me wasn’t too fond of the metro New York area before that, and after that, really started to dislike the city that everyone else loves.

I moved to Boston, a place where everyone shares my general disdain for Jay-Z’s favorite city that doesn’t sleep, and have settled nicely into disparaging the Yankees, Mets, Giants, Jets and Knicks along with any anonymous person I run into on the street.

Until this month, that is.

The Yet to Be Named Watch: This Is Why You Wear a Cage

7 September, 2009 / Kat

Bruins rookie camp (Photo: Twitter @NHLBruins)

Readers of …On Being a Sports Girl are quite familiar with the reoccurring feature, “The Everyone’s Favorite Goalie Watch,” a series I began to follow the fledgling professional career of everyone’s favorite recent Boston University goaltender, John Curry. While Curry will always be one of my favorite college hockey players, and I will never give up that feature, my other favorite has now turned pro, and will now get a series of his own.

Readers, welcome to my reoccurring look at the fledgling professional hockey career of former BU right wing Jason Lawrence, a series I have yet to find a good, non confusing name for. (I originally named it something else having to do with the wonderful and memorable restaurants of Lawrence’s hometown, which also happens to be the hometown of my fiance, thus I’m quite familiar with it. However, the name just didn’t work, and I am open to suggestions.)

Lawrence is currently taking part in Boston Bruins rookie camp in Kitchener, Ontario, one of eight invitees to the camp. The remainder of the camp roster is filled with drafted or acquired young players, such as Zach Hamill and Jamie Arniel. (On a side note, another rookie camp participant is 2006 sixth round draft pick Alain Goulet, which makes me picture Will Farrell impersonating Robert Goulet on hockey skates, crooning “Bob Goulet needs a second chance.”) Continue reading