Logos of Tradition

Epiphanies. You gotta love ‘em.

I had one not too long ago, during an NHL Playoff game between the Montreal Canadiens and the Philadelphia Flyers. Philadelphia centre Daniel Briere was sitting on the bench after a particularly productive shift when the camera moved in for a close-up.

That’s when it hit me: The Flyers have a stupid logo.

But hand-in-hand with that realization was the simple truth that I love that stupid logo. I mean, at first glance I’m thinking, “what the heck is that thing?” But I don’t love that logo because of how it looks; I love it for what it represents.

The best logos in sports are the ones that carry with them not the most pleasing aesthetics, but rather, the best traditions. When Danny Briere puts on that Flyer jersey he owes something to all the fans who watched Bobby Clarke, Bernie Parent, Reggie Leach and the Broadstreet Bullies during the 1970’s.

The same can be said for the Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs, Detroit Red Wings, Boston Bruins, New York Rangers, and the Chicago Blackhawks. The vaunted original six. In fact, for team like these, who have deviated their uniforms little in the past 100 or so years, the traditions run deeper and the obligation to current players to honor those traditions is steeper (the rhyme just seemed so natural).

Year after year, generation after generation, great athletes - great men - have worn these logos. It is what makes Montreal a magical place to play hockey, what gives the Yankees a mystique no other team can match.

More and more however, we are seeing the death of this kind of logo. The mentality of having one team logo and letting it steep in tradition is gone. Now the idea is to sell merchandise; the bottom line has become the be all and end all. Commercialism has trumped tradition yet again.

But where has that left us? With disastrous experiments like this, this, this, and this. The Dallas Stars won the Stanley Cup in 1999 and have built a strong, winning tradition in Dallas. Last year and this year however, they’ve managed to muck up a good thing with this offering, which puzzled everyone and has since been canned, and their most recent submission. Not exactly creative.

No, I’m not sure what the former was supposed to be, and yes, I’m underwhelmed with the latter. Some teams have gotten smart and gone back to older looks, mainly the Washington Capitals who started here, moved to a more mod look, but then came back to their roots this past year. The Bruins did it as well, moving back the look that Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito made famous in their Stanley Cup years.

The only good news is that we’ll get a few years off from being bombarded with ugly hockey sweaters, since the NHL switched to the RBK jerseys

What I’m saying is, tradition is a great thing. Except in the case of the NBA. They can be accused of attempting to cash in on theirs. The best jerseys in basketball are again, the staples, the ones that carry the richest history. The Knicks, the Bulls, the Celtics and Lakers all have changed their jerseys remarkably little over the decades and remain some of the best looking jerseys in basketball. Laker gold, Celtic green; these colors are not just colors — they mean something.

On the flip side, every season the NBA trots out so many throwback nights, there are times that I can’t recognize which team is which. I mean, who’s idea was this? And why would anyone want to remember this?

I’m laboring my point, but it’s just so much fun. In the case of some of the NBA throwback jerseys, those things HAD to be changed. No tradition can be built on the back of some of those horriawful (thanks Shaq) jerseys.

The shameful thing is there’s money to be made because all of the sudden everybody wants to be the guy (or gal) with the rare coveted throwback. So we are left to decide what matters more: buying a Montreal Canadiens jersey knowing that Maurice Richard, Jean Beliveau, Larry Robinson, Serge Savard, Ken Dryden, and Patrick Roy wore that same logo. Or buying a rare (read: ugly) throwback because it matches your new pumas.

Minor aesthetics such as trim will always change. But I wonder if we’ll see younger franchises create a logo and stick with it. New designs and alternate jerseys might sell a bit in a flurry, but it’s smoke and mirrors. After all, ask the Yankees: merchandise sales are truly built on tradition, not innovation.