Calgary Wranglers

11

This logo is what happens when you can't choose between two good ideas and wind up squishing them together in a way that doesn't work.

First, you have the old Atlanta Flames logo. For those who don't know, today's Calgary Flames started off in Atlanta as the Atlanta Flames back in 1972. I'm not entirely certain why anyone thought putting an NHL team in Atlanta in 1972 was a good idea.* At the time the southernmost NHL team east of the Mississippi River was Philadelphia, and Atlanta had never had an ice hockey team at any level of play. But in the early 1970s the NHL was trying to fend off the newly-founded World Hockey Association, and put teams in a few markets that couldn't support a major league hockey team just to keep the WHA out, because apparently putting an NHL team in a market where it was doomed to fail would somehow hurt the WHA more than just letting the WHA put a team in that market and having a WHA team fail instead.

Anyway, Atlanta got an NHL team, and it was named the Flames because if there's one moment in Atlanta history that all Atlanteans are proud of, it's the time the city got burned to the ground by General Sherman. Okay, so it's an odd thing to call a team in Atlanta, and also an odd thing to call an ice hockey team anywhere, but you gotta admit, that's a damn cool logo. I don't know about you, but it's one of my all-time favorite NHL logos.

The Calgary Flames are clearly fond of the old Atlanta logo as well. From time to time they've used a small Atlanta logo as the "A" for the team's alternate captains. And for a while their affiliate was in Glens Falls, NY and played as the Adirondack Flames using the old Atlanta Flames logo. So when the Calgary Flames decided to jump on the trend of putting their AHL affiliate in the same arena as themselves, they could have simply called the team the Alberta Flames or Alberta Heat (the team had previously been the Abbotsford Heat and Stockton Heat) and brought the Atlanta Flames logo back once again.

Second, it goes without saying that any large city in Canada has a long hockey history with more than just one team. In addition to the Flames, over the years Calgary has hosted over a dozen hockey teams, with several of them having names related to the Calgary Stampede, an annual rodeo in Calgary which is one of the largest in the world. There's been the Calgary Stampeders, the Calgary Cowboys, the Calgary Mustangs, the Calgary Spurs, and the Calgary Wranglers, the last of which was a team in the Western Hockey League from 1977 to 1987. Since there's a long-standing tradition of naming new teams after old teams in minor league sports, picking one of these names would have been a good idea. And, if you can swing it, it might be a good idea to use the old logo as well.

So what does this team do? Well, it tries to do both. It uses the Calgary Wranglers name. But they don't use the old Wranglers logo, or even one that features a wrangler of any kind. Instead, it shoehorns the flame into a W for the logo. It's an interesting logo visually, but it doesn't make a lot of sense. And I feel like it leaves people in both camps — those who wanted the team to be the Alberta Flames/Heat and use the Atlanta Flames logo, and those who wanted the team to be the Calgary Wranglers and use the old Wranglers logo — rather disappointed. For those us of in the first camp (I freely admit I wanted the team to be the Alberta Flames), the name is wrong, and the letter is wrong. And I'm reasonably certain those in the Wranglers camp are happy with the name but wish the logo included, you know, the thing the team is actually named after.

There are times compromise is good. This is not one of them. Yes, I would have preferred they name the team the Alberta Flames or Alberta Heat and bring back one of the best logos in the history of professional hockey. But they didn't. And if they were going to go with the Calgary Wranglers name, even I would have preferred an actual wrangler in the logo. Don't half-ass it, guys. Make a decision, and stick with it.

*	I'm not sure why anyone thought it was a good idea in 1999, either, but that's a story for another day.

Final Score: 11 points.
Penalties: Irrelevance, 14 pts.
Bonuses: Local, -3 pts.