Greenville Road Warriors

24

Greenville is the new home of the Johnstown Chiefs, the last of the ECHL's original teams in its original location. Like the name "Chiefs", the name "Road Warriors" is taken from a movie. But somehow it doesn't work nearly so well this time.

The name "Chiefs" was pretty much impossible to argue with. Johnstown was where the most iconic hockey movie of all time was filmed, and "Chiefs" was the name of the team in that movie. It was, in short, the quintessential minor league hockey team name. No other movie-referencing name could ever be better than "Johnstown Chiefs". The only way another team could even compete with that name would be if the Alaska Aces renamed themselves the Alaska Mystery. That name still wouldn't be as good as "Johnstown Chiefs", but it would at least be a worthy competitor. This is because if you want to use a movie reference as your team name, it should be either a hockey movie reference (and "Mighty Ducks" doesn't count) or a movie set in the place where the team plays (yes, I know that Mystery, Alaska isn't set in Anchorage, but it's at least set in Alaska), and preferably it should be both. "Road Warriors" is neither.

Indeed, it's harder to imagine a worse movie for a hockey team's name to reference than The Road Warrior. The movie is set in Australia. There is no ice hockey in Australia. For that matter, there is no winter in Australia. In most parts of the country, the low temperate in their coldest months — let me stress that I'm talking about the low, not the average or the high — is around 10°C (50°F). That's higher than the average winter high where I live, and I live in the Southern U.S. In fact, Australia's so-called winter is around the same temperature as summer in Calgary. Seriously.

Furthermore, the logo doesn't look anything like the movie. The movie had a futuristic, punk look. the character in this logo looks like he just stepped out of the year 847. The only hint of modernity in this logo is the road in the shield behind him. At least, that would be a hint of modernity if it actually looked like a road on a shield behind him. Thanks to the way it continues the curves of his collars, the effect is more like it's the high back seen on the sorts of capes favored by Count Dracula and gothic nerds dressing up like him at various cons.

(And if I may make a brief side note on that topic, here's some advice to any nerds reading this who are trying to decide who to dress up as the next time they are at a con. Based on the pictures I've seen, it would actually be original if someone did in fact dress up as Dracula at one of these things. It would certainly be more original than being one of the 10,114 people dressed as a Star Trek character, one of the 8,465 people dressed as a Star Wars character, or one of the 2,459 people dressed as an incarnation of Doctor Who, and every last one of those Doctor Whos is either the Fourth Doctor or the Tenth Doctor...really, would it kill you people who dress as one of the other nine? In fairness, this paragraph is entirely based on the pictures my con-attending friends have shown me, so I could be getting a really skewed view of things based on what they consider worthy of taking a photo of. I really need to quit looking at these pictures. I've already seen more than enough photos of women dressed as "Slave Leia" who had absolutely no business whatsoever dressing as Slave Leia.)

After all this talk of movies, it seems only appropriate to me to end this review with a movie quote. I'd quote The Road Warrior, except I don't know any quotes from it because I've never watched it. I'd quote Slap Shot, except that I've managed to go this far without throwing any really bad words into this review and there's almost no way to quote that movie without using really bad words. Besides, I think the perfect quote for this review comes not from the movie Slap Shot, not from the movie The Road Warrior, but rather from the movie Mr. Mom. Greenville Road Warriors owners, I say to you: "You're doing it wrong."

Final Score: 24 points.
Penalties: Name-Logo, 2 pts; Colorful, 13 pts; Yucky-Logo, 5 pts; Yucky-Name, 4 pts.
Bonuses: None.