Vancouver Canadians

31

One of the first reviews I wrote for this website was the Rochester Americans of the American Hockey League. In it, I commented that one of the problems with the name was that most players for the Rochester Americans were not, in fact, Americans (only six out of twenty-two were). The Vancouver Canadians suffer from a similar problem. Currently, out of the thirty players whose nationality I could determine, only three are Canadians. Two are Puerto Rican; one is Venezuelan; the remaining twenty-four are American. They do manage to avoid a couple of other problems with the Rochester Americans name (they don't play in the Canadian Baseall League; they are the only Canadian team in their league and indeed the only Canadian team in the affiliated minor leagues), but the name still doesn't work.

Teams named after nationalities, when it comes right down to it, rarely do work. It gets back to the whole nickname-as-totem thing. If you call yourself the Bears, you're saying you're big and strong (and that you sleep all winter, but let's not worry about that). If you call yourself the Cardinals, you're saying you have powers that most humans lack (flight and the ability to vote for the next pope). If you call yourself the Canadians, you're saying...what are you saying? That you rhyme "about" with "coat"? That you eat poutine? That you're not very good at baseball because you spent more time playing hockey as a kid?

There's another problem with naming your team after a nationality, which is that you don't get to make a very good logo. Look at all the teams in North America named after nationalities. You've got the Rochester Americans, whose logo is a striped shield and the word "Americans". You've got the Allen Americans, whose logo is a striped shield with a star-shaped "A". You've got the Montreal Canadiens, whose logo is a "C" with a small "H" inside it. You've got the Vancouver Canucks, whose logo is a "C" made out of a killer whale. And you've got these guys, whose logo is a "C" with a baseball in it. Given the similarity between the two "Americans" logos and the similarity between the three "Canadiens"/"Canadians"/"Canucks" logos, there's clearly not a lot you can do with these names.

As I see it, the solution here is obvious: the Vancouver Canadians should change their name. The city has teams named the Whitecaps, the Ravens, the Lions, and the Titans, so clearly there are things other than nationality to name a team in Vancouver, even if you wouldn't know it from looking at their NHL team. And every one of these teams has a logo which is either better than the Canadians' (every team except the Ravens) or at least making more of an effort (the Ravens). The only logo in town, aside from the Canadians, which can't claim either of these things? The Canucks. There's a lesson there, guys. Please learn it.

Final Score: 31 points.
Penalties: Equipment, 13 pts; Letter, 24 pts.
Bonuses: Local, -6 pts.