Bloomington Blaze

8

For some reason, I've always been fond of the logos based on the first letter of the place where the team plays. I'm not really sure why. It's every bit as much a cliché as the JACKALs I complain about here in the hockey section or the BICs I complain about in the baseball section, but I like it nonetheless. Still, this logo manages to have a bit too much "same ol' same ol'" in it even compared to other letter-based logos.

The problem begins in 1975 with the Baltimore Blades. You may have never heard of this team. They existed for all of seventeen games when the World Hockey Association's Michigan Stags folded in the middle of the 1975 season. Or at least, they tried to fold. The league wouldn't let them. Instead, the league took over the team and sent them to Baltimore. I'm guessing the WHA figured that since the newly-formed Washington Capitals were so awful (remember, this was the season the Caps set a new, still-standing record for worst winning percentage in NHL history, a mere .131), hockey fans in the D.C. area would be willing to drive to Baltimore to see a good team there. That might have been true, but the world will never know, because there wasn't a good team in Baltimore. The Blades went 3-13-1 during their time in B-more, which at .206 was only slightly better than Washington. As a result, the team folded at the end of the season. There was talk of moving to Seattle, but apparently the people of Seattle were about as enthusiastic about this as you'd expect a city to be about the prospect of becoming the new home of a team that went 3-13-1 in their previous city.

Anyway, as you can see from the picture above and to your right, their logo was a black B on an orange background. I saw this logo in person once, as my dad took the family to a Blades game (against the Phoenix Roadrunners, if I remember correctly).

Then in 1990 the city of Richmond got a new hockey team and called them the Richmond Renegades. Most people will remember the Renegades' logo as being one of the hideous teal-and-magenta monstrosities that were so prevalent in the mid-to-late 1990s, but the team started with a different color scheme. The logo, as you see to your left, was a black R with an orange interior. This is so similar to the Baltimore Blades logo that when I first saw Richmond's logo, I misremembered (keep in mind that I had only seen Baltimore's logo on one occasion and it was over fifteen years prior) and thought the Renegades had simply taken the Blades' old logo and altered it to make the B into an R.

So now the Bloomington Blaze come along, and their logo is a black B with an orange interior. Um, okay. I'm sure the logo designer didn't do this on purpose — I wouldn't be surprised to learn he had never seen the Renegades' first logo, and would be surprised to learn that he had seen the Blades' — but I'm sure you will understand if my reaction to this logo is "This again?"

But in fairness, I shouldn't criticize them for this. Bloomington Blaze is a reasonable name to pick. (Not fantastic, but not bad.) And if someone had asked me to design a logo for a team called the Bloomington Blaze, I'd have probably come up with something very similar to this even though I'm aware of the Baltimore Blades and Richmond Renegades logos. After all, you have to have flames in the logo. The flames should probably be on something rather than just hanging in midair for no apparent reason, and the letter is about the best thing to attach the flames to (a puck would look boring since it's just a circle, a hockey stick would be disproportionately long or tall, a hockey player would look ridiculous, and just about anything else would be irrelevant). Finally, the flames have to be orange, and black is about the only color that looks good with orange.

In short, I think this is about the best logo you could have for a team called the Bloomington Blaze. It's not the designer's fault that other teams have used such similar logos. I may not like this logo — indeed, I will go so far as to say I actively dislike it — because of how much it reminds me of other logos. But I have to concede that it's through real no fault of their own.

Final Score: 8 points.
Penalties: Singular, 6 pts; Alliteration, 2 pts.
Bonuses: None.