Ducks and Canucks

We went to the home opener of the Anaheim Ducks last night, although really, we're dyed-in-the-wool Los Angeles Kings fans. But the Ducks are a hometown team like the Angels or the San Diego Chargers, so we cheered them to a 4-3 win over the Vancouver Canucks. Seeing the Canucks' new-ish logo live and in-person made us think of the evolution both clubs' logos have gone through over their respective histories.

NHL teams have a tendency to juggle retro or alternate logos and jerseys so often that sometimes it's hard to say what is a current logo and what is historic. It may cause confusion, but it's an easy way to sell more merchandise.

Against the Kings last week, for their first game of the team's 40th anniversary season, Vancouver players wore jerseys with their original, unimaginative hockey-stick-lying-on-the-ice logo, one of the worst pro sports logos ever created. Last night they wore their modern breaching-whale-out-of-a-C logo. The whale has a stylistic totem-pole look, and jerseys have the team's original bright blue and green colors, appropriate for the Pacific Northwest (and not unlike the Seattle Seahawks').

From left to right, the Canucks' new logo; the middle years logo; the original, 1970 logo

The whale logo is a major improvement over the hockey stick, as well as over the tepid, shooshing "Canucks" ice skate logo from a couple of years back. That's when Vancouver dumped its calm blue and green for the more aggressive black, red and yellow color scheme. But the logo only progressed from a stick to a skate, a symbol generic enough to fit any ice-skating rink in North America. If Vancouver stays with the blue-green and whale logo, it will finally have a cohesive look and feel worthy of a big-league franchise.

The Ducks, meanwhile, have only been around for 17 seasons, but they have switched logos and colors as well. The marketing brainchild of Disney, they joined the NHL at the height of Gretzky mania in Southern California, and were given the movie tie-in name Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. It was easy to hate them just for that, complete with childish logo and teal-and maroon colors. When Disney sold the team, the new owners tried to polish their image with a logo makeover and a more sophisticated gold, black and orange color scheme. They also dropped the word "mighty" from the nickname. The new logo is a  "D" stylized in the shape of a webbed foot. Better than the original, but not great.

The Ducks' current logo, left; the ugly Disney original

So the game got us to thinking about sports logos. Who has the best? Who has the worst? We'll have to think about that.