Bridgeport Islanders

19

Yay! Fishsticks Boy is back!

I'm guessing 99% of my readers know this, but for those who don't: Back in the 1990s, the New York Islanders decided it was time to update their logo, and so they replaced their NY-monogram-and-outline-of-Long-Island logo with a rendering of a fisherman holding a hockey stick while standing in front of a hockey goal. Islanders Fans hated it. Fans of opposing teams mocked it. Everybody compared it to the logo of Gorton's; apparently Rangers fans spent the next several years taunting the Islanders with chants of "We want fishsticks!" The team promised to bring back the old logo as soon as the league would let them and they made good on their promise. And aside from a few minor tweaks like changing the precise shade of blue used, the team has used the original logo ever since.

Most hockey fans figured they'd never see the the Fisherman logo again. But a couple of years ago the New York Islanders decided to bring him back for their "Reverse Retro" jerseys. And now, they've made a few tweaks and made it the logo for their AHL affiliate.

And you know what? I prefer this logo. I always thought it was unfairly maligned.

Part of the problem was that the logo made its debut accompanied by an absolutely dreadful jersey design. Rather than basic stripes or even an odd slant of the sort that was popular in the 90s, they went with an utterly ludicrous swoopy wave effect. Worse, they did a similar thing with the numbers and names on the jerseys. You could get seasick looking at these jerseys. The best logo in the world — and to be clear, Fishsticks Boy is far from the best logo in the world; I think a fair assessment would be that it's average — would seem terrible placed on these jerseys. It's no wonder the logo took so much heat. But the logo itself wasn't the main problem.

And let's be honest here: the original New York Islanders logo was not good. It's too busy. The NY monogram is blocky. If you didn't know that thing in the middle was shaped like Long Island you'd wonder why the logo featured a hairball somebody's cat had horked up. Fishsticks Boy may be a mediocre logo, but mediocre is better than bad. Therefore, Fishsticks Boy is a better logo. That true with the garish colors the original version used; it's more true with the more muted colors the tweaked-for-Bridgeport version uses..

So I'm happy to see this logo get a second chance. I still think it's ridiculous that a team located on the mainland is called the Islanders, but that's a separate issue from the logo. Who knows? Maybe one day the NHL team will realize the fisherman logo is better than the hairball logo and bring it back, but this time put it on a jersey that doesn't suck. (The Bridgeport Islanders' jerseys just have basic stripes along the bottom.)

Okay, that's not likely, but in the meanwhile, Bridgeport joins Abbotsford on the short list of minor league teams who use the same name as their parent team but have a better logo. Maybe that's more a statement on how bad the New York Islanders logo is than it is a statement on how good the Bridgeport Islanders logo is, but either way, it's the truth.

Final Score: 19 points.
Penalties: Name-Logo, 2 pts; Equip-Logo, 5 pts; Offspring, 5 pts; Yucky-Name, 4 pts; Local (as penalty), 3 pts.
Bonuses: None.