Lowell Devils

30

If you look to the left you will see a reproduction of a 16th-century woodcarving depicting the devil. And down a little bit and to the right, you will see another depiction of the devil from the late 15th century. Most of these two depictions of the devil will be familiar to you: the horns, the wings (not visible in the second picture, but we can assume they are there), and the goat legs. But one thing I had never heard of before was that he apparently has the feet of a chicken. And both of these depictions agree on this detail.

Admittedly, I'm not exactly an expert on Christian symbology, especially mediæval Christian symbology. But still I find it kind of intriguing. Part of what I find intriguing about it is that this notion seems to have completely disappeared from modern thought. If you see a depiction made of the devil today, he may have human legs and feet, or he may still be shown with a goat's legs and feet. But chicken feet? No. And if you mention "goat legs" to someone, their first thought may very well be the devil. Say "chicken feet" and there's no telling what they'll think of. Me, I'll think of the Chinese buffet near where I work that actually has chicken feet as one of its offerings. I even tried them once. The odds of me trying them again, however, are fairly remote.

The devil in Lowell's logo, you will note, lacks both of these. There's nothing wrong with this — as I said, devils are often shown these days with human legs and feet. And I suppose that since they made the (typical) decision to depict said devil as a hockey player, giving him human legs and feet did make the job easier. But I'm sure it goes without saying that I would have preferred they not depict the devil as a hockey player. First of all, it's kind of hard to skate on brimstone. Second, if you look closely you'll see that the blades of the skates are apparently an actual part of his body. Third, they couldn't resist the temptation to compound the stupidity by turning the hockey stick into a pitchfork on the other end. (Admittedly, it's a cool stupidity, and I'd love to see someone actually play with such a thing — Miroslav Satan is the obvious candidate — but it's still stupid.) And finally, it just detracts away from the face they gave him, which actually looks kind of cool. If they had simply used the face without the rest of the body, it would have been much better.

For that matter, removing the "L" with the horns and tail would have made it better. It's been done before, and I don't just mean by their parent team in New Jersey. Look to the left and you'll see the logo for the Utica Devils, who played in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Why the minor league teams keep emulating the New Jersey Devils' logo is beyond me. It's kind of neat, but it's not the greatest logo by any stretch. Besides, part of what makes it neat is the way the "N" and "J" get combined into one character. Neither the Utica Devils' logo nor the Lowell Devils' logo do this.

But there's a greater issue at hand here, which is that they simply didn't need to use the parent team's name at all. The previous team name (Lowell Lock Monsters), while hardly the stuff of legend, was a decent name. And it sort of worked with the Devils anyway — devils and monsters are both generally thought of as nasty, scary things that you really don't want to encouter in a dark alley. Or better yet, they could have taken into account the fact that Lowell is a mere 35km (about 20 miles) from Salem, site of the Salem Witch Trials. Why not embrace that spooky legend instead of embracing a spooky legend from three (admittedly small) states away?

The team really should have given themselves a Salem-themed name. The Lowell Witches might not have gone over too well, but they could have used Wizards, Warlocks, Hangmen (contrary to legend, the convicted "witches" were hung, not burned), etc.

Indeed, since the girls were reputedly possessed by demons, the powers that be could have named this team the Lowell...er...

Never mind. The name's fine.

Final Score: 30 points.
Penalties: Equip-logo (quadruply-egregious), 25 pts; Offspring, 5 pts.
Bonuses: None.