Ontario Reign

31

There are rare occasions when I actually wish a team used something other than a city as their geographic moniker. This is one of those occasions. I mean, come on: everyone who sees that the ECHL has a team in Ontario is going to assume that the team plays in the Canadian province between Québec and Manitoba. But that's not the Ontatio this team plays in. They play in the city of Ontario, California — a city whose major defining characteristic is that it shares a name with the Canadian province between Québec and Manitoba. (In case you're wondering, the name does come from the Canadian province in a roundabout sort of way.) The only problem is that there isn't really anything else to use that works. "Southern California"? There's at least one other ECHL team in Southern California, and maybe more depending on how you define it (I'll be honest: I have no idea where the border between Northern and Southern California is; I have no idea if there's a "Central California" between them, and most of all I have no idea why the state is so damn big. There are nine states that are smaller than the county Ontario is located in, for crying out loud.) "San Bernardino County"? No, seven syllables is just too many for the geographic moniker, no matter what the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim think. "Inland Empire"? The only people likely to know what the hell that means are people who already know where Ontario is (besides, there are two other regions in the United States called the Inland Empire). The obvious solution, of course, is that the arena should never have been built in Ontario in the first place. It should have been built in a nearby city whose name wouldn't cause so much confusion — Chino, for example. They could then use the name "Chino Blazers", and thus have a name which not only sounds better than "Ontario Reign", but also describes a stylish outfit.

But the arena got built in Ontario, so "Chino" won't work. And of course, the team is owned by the Los Angeles Kings, who have already established that every single freaking team they own has to have a name related to kings (previous examples: Manchester Monarchs, Reading Royals). Of course, it's hard to find a word for royalty that starts with the letter O ("Overlords"?), so this time they couldn't do the alliteration they had been so fond of in previous cities. In fact, they seem to have been unable to come up with any new synonyms for a king at all, so they resorted to the soccer-esque abstract noun "Reign". Here's a hint for the people who named the team: Get a thesaurus. You could have used Caesar, Caliph, Czar, Emperor, Kaiser, Khan, Shah, or Sultan. "Ontario Emperors" would have worked nicely, especially given the "Inland Empire" name I mentioned last paragraph. Personally, I think "Ontario Khans" has a nice ring to it. But no one asked me. No one ever asks me. They should, especially if "Ontario Reign" is the best they can come up with on their own.

The logo is refreshingly different from the purple-and-black lions they used in Manchester and Reading (I guess they were afraid to come up with something too similar to Reading, which after all is in the same league). Of course, "different" and "better" are two different words. This logo has problems of its own. For one thing, dragons are only symbols of royalty in Asia, and this is clearly a European dragon. Second, with the lions they wisely avoided putting hockey equipment in the logo. No such luck here. Here, the dragon is holding a hockey stick in front of his mouth. I think he's trying to set the stick on fire. This would have worked in the old days when hockey sticks were made of wood, but can you set these new composite things on fire? Granted, it would look really cool on the ice, and would probably intimidate your opponent. But that's overkill. When you've got claws and wings and can breathe fire, you don't need a flaming hockey stick to intimidate your opponent. You don't need a hockey stick at all. You can just look at your opponent and give a quick puff of smoke, and your opponent will probably pick up the puck and throw it into his own net for you. He'll also probably flee the ice, meaning you'll win by forfeit.

I think the idea in the design is that the dragon is supposed to be the coat of arms on a shield. If so, there's a slight problem, which is that the blade of the hockey stick and the tip of the wing go beyond the edge of the shield. We've all seen billboards that do this, but billboards serve a slightly different function from shields. I don't claim to be an expert on the matter (I may be a geek, but I was never so far gone as to join the SCA), but I don't think anyone ever did that with shields. I'm fairly certain that, unlike billboards, the shields were just painted, which would make it hard to have designs go beyond the borders. I suppose there could be a spell for that, but if I'm a medieval knight and I've got the services of a wizard at my disposal, I'm going to give him a task a little more important than "Can you make the design on my shield move beyond the border?" I'm going to ask him "Can you make it so that anyone fighting me misses?" Or "Can you make me invisible?" Or maybe even a simple "Can you keep me from having to go to the bathroom for the next ten hours or so? One I get this damn suit of armor on, it's kind of hard to remove it in time if I need to pee."

Or maybe, just maybe, I'd say "Can you use your magic to change what someone is thinking? Good. Do me a favor: whoever it is that thinks 'Ontario Reign" is a good name and that stupid dragon is a good logo...convince them otherwise."

Final Score: 31 points.
Penalties: Singular, 6 pts; Irrelevance, 14 pts; Name-Logo, 2 pts; Equip-Logo, 5 pts; Yucky-Name, 4 pts.
Bonuses: None.