Capitales de Québec

81

Here we go again. Last week I spent a considerable portion of the article discussing that the New Orleans Zephyrs had to go with a fleur-de-lis in their logo because they picked a name which doesn't lend itself to a logo and a fleur-de-lis is representative of New Orleans. Now I'm reviewing les Capitales de Québec, and once again, it's a team whose name doesn't lend itself to a logo easily, so they went with a fleur-de-lis. Again, this is somewhat reasonable, because the flag of the province of Québec features four fleurs-de-lis on it.

Unlike the Zephyrs logo, in this logo the fleur-de-lis is not the largest feature. But it is nonetheless the most distinct, which should give you an idea of how generic the rest of the logo is. It's basically a variant on the "baseball-in-circle" logo, with the variation coming from the fact that the "circle" is actually a capital Q. And that's it. That's the whole logo.

I suppose I shouldn't blame them. If you look at other teams named the Capitals, it quickly becomes clear that they all struggle with what to do for a logo. For most of its existence, the NHL Washington Capitals have gone with a simple wordmark. The Sacramento Capitals of World Team Tennis included a drawing of the dome atop the California state capitol. The York Capitals* of American Indoor Football go with a man wearing a powdered wig and holding a football in front of a Revolution-era flag — in short, they tried to represent what York is (allegedly) the capital of. The Victoria Capitals of the Canadian Baseball League also went with a capitol dome; the Vienna Capitals of Austria's Eishockey Liga** go with an unrelated, abstract design which may or may not be intended to look like a fireball. Of these, the capital dome isn't an option for Québec: instead of a dome, the Parliament Building in Québec has a tower in an excessively ornate, Second Empire architecture. That leaves a wordmark, an unrelated design, or something representing the province of Québec. Les Capitales apparently decided to throw out the second option and split the difference between the first and the third. Is it a great solution? No. Is it really any worse than any other logo belonging to a team called the Capitals? No. So, whatever. Assuming they're not going to change the name from les Capitales (and I don't know how much I can criticize that when freaking York thinks they're allowed to use it), I suppose this'll have to do.

*	The name comes from the fact that the Continental Congress met in York for a few months during the Revolutionary War while the real capital (Philadelphia) was under British control; York has never actually been the capital of anything.
**	Yes, the name of the hockey team is in English despite being in a German-speaking country. This is not uncommon in European sports for some reason; other examples include the Hamburg Freezers of die Deutsche Eishockey Liga, the Kloten Flyers of Switzerland's National League A (whose league name is in English), and the Amsterdam Pirates of the Netherlands' Honkbal Hoofdklasse.

Final Score: 81 points.
Penalties: Alliteration, 5 pts; Equipment, 13 pts; Letter, 24 pts; Irrelevance, 39 pts.
Bonuses: None.