I could be a real dick here if I wanted. If I was so inclined, I could actually give this team, who are called the "Wolf Pack" and who have a wolf in their logo, the Irrelevant penalty. Seriously. As it turns out, a "wolf pack" has nothing to do with wolves. When you have a group of wolves, they are indeed called a pack, but you don't call it a wolf pack. You call it a pack of wolves. A wolf pack is a group of submarines fighting as a group in a naval battle.

Of course, I'm not going to be that obnoxious. For one thing, saying that you can't call a pack of wolves a "wolf pack" is the sort of semantic quibbling that always pisses me off whenever I hear anyone other than me do it. For another, I happen to think that "Wolf Pack" is a really cool name. And finally, it's a decent looking wolf. It's not as good as the Chicago Wolves logo, but considering the fact that the Chicago Wolves have, in my opinion, the best logo in minor league hockey, I shouldn't hold that against Hartford.

(At this point, some people who went to the same college as I did are appalled at what I just said. See, I went to the University of North Carolina, whose main rivals are Duke University and North Carolina State University. And what is the name of NCSU's teams? The Wolfpack. Some fellow UNC grads, no doubt, can't believe I just said "Wolf Pack" is a cool name. These people, of course, take college sports too seriously. And it's not like UNC has a good team name. Tarheels? What is it with some colleges that they have such lame names? I could do a website dedicated just to college names if I wanted. The UC Irvine Anteaters? Nebraska Cornhuskers? Virginia Tech Hokies? And these are all Division I schools. Get down into Division II and Division III and you get such gems as the Washburn Ichabods, Arkansas Tech Wonder Boys, UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs, Williams Ephs (I have to say it: Are they Eph-ing kidding me?), Rowan Profs, and Nyack Purple Pride. All of a sudden Amarillo Gorillas doesn't sound so bad.)

There is, incidentally, a nice little irony in the Hartford AHL team being called the Wolf Pack. Remember the NCSU Wolfpack I mentioned a little bit ago? They play in the same arena as an NHL team called the Carolina Hurricanes. And who did the Hurricanes used to be? That's right: The Hartford Whalers.

I've been saying this for years and I'll say it again: Hartford can have the Hurricanes back whenever they want them as far as I'm concerned. I'm surprised they lasted this long. Stupid NHL Players Association: if they had shown some backbone the Hurricanes would be on their way to Portland by now.

Okay, enough bitching (although I suspect I just made several new friends in Hartford by telling Karmanos to piss off). Let's look at the logo. No, not the Tidy-Bowl logo the Hurricanes use...I'm actually going to start talking about the Hartford Wolfpack for a change.

There's one interesting detail about this logo that may make it unique among sports teams. You have to look pretty closely to see it, but the gums are accurately colored in the Wolf Pack's logo. In other words, this is to my knowledge the only professional sports team I am aware of with pink in their logo. Even more impressive is that it doesn't look hopelessly effeminate. If you had offered to bet me that a team could put pink in their logo and still have an aggressive looking logo, I'd have refused the bet because it was too easy. But the Wolf Pack have managed it. Okay, it's sort of cheating considering that the pink covers something like one percent of the logo, but I don't think the designer set out to include pink in the logo.

Or maybe he did. I could see some designer deciding it would be really funny to stick pink in the logo just to see if anyone noticed. Sort of like the way Dan Piraro keeps sticking slices of pie into Bizarro comic strips for no discernible reason.

We have yet another team whose logo animal has glowing red eyes (one of these days I'm going to make a penalty for that), but somehow that combined with the waves makes this work. It looks like a demon disguised as a wolf came from the depths of Hell through the water and surfaced just off the coast of Connecticut. That's a pretty cool image.

It would be even cooler if Hartford wasn't closer to Massachusetts than the coast, but oh well. It's the thought that counts.

Final Score: 16 points.
Penalties: Singular, 6 pts; Name-logo, 2 pts; Colorful, 13 pts.
Bonuses: Cool-name, -5 pts.