BOSTON. As the Boston Bruins unveiled their new logos and uniforms yesterday at the TD Banknorth Garden, the sentiments of long-suffering fans of the team were echoed across the country. "There was nothing wrong with the NHL--and I mean nothing--that a new set of uniforms couldn't fix," according to Sean Murphy, father of two sons who play in Squirt and Mini-Mite leagues here.
Old logos
The Bruins' old logo is a black-and-gold spoked letter "B". The Bruins' new logo is a black-and-gold spoked letter "B" with added black trim. Karen Lavangetta, a mother of three from Winchester, Mass., recognized the difference immediately. "One has an extra black line," she said. "That will make up for the Joe Thornton trade."
New logos.
The Bruins' other new logo is also an old logo, depicting a prowling bear beneath the word "Bruins" arranged in a semicircle over its back. The Bruins' owners, whose tight-fisted approach to payrolls is cited by fans as the cause of the team's failure to win a Stanley Cup since 1972, said they chose the old logos as the new logos to save money to spend on free-agents. "If we take the $85 we will save in artwork and printing costs and invest it wisely, we should be able to take a run at Sidney Crosby when his contract expires," said Jeremy Jacobs from Delaware North headquarters in an underground bunker at an undisclosed location outside of Buffalo, New York.
Delaware North Headquarters: "I say we jack up a medium Coke to $15."
The NHL ordered the off-season upgrade in order to stem declining attendance and viewership since the league's 2004-05 labor dispute. That player lockout caused professional hockey to lose its status as the fourth major sport to bowling, which is interrupted by fights less often.
The next Jaromir Jagr?
Major-league sports team use multiple logos and uniforms to increase revenues from expensive doo-dads that parents must buy their children in order to get them to take their seats, or leave arenas after games. "The cost of running an NHL is so great that owners need to get revenue from any source they can," says Owen Fisher, an expert on professional sports finances who teaches at Brandeis University. "People don't realize it, but a rookie defenseman for the Bruins can make as much as a hostess in a really nice restaurant."
Sure she's cute, but is she a penalty-killer?
In other championship-starved cities hockey fans greeted the news that the NHL had required franchises to upgrade their on-ice apparel with sighs of relief. Chicago Blackhawk fan Charlie Adams, a pipefitter, said he hoped the change will mean his team will win it all before he dies. "Maybe they'll have to wheel me into the bleachers on a stretcher, but if I can just catch a glimpse of the guys in their new unis with Lord Stanley's Cup lifted over their heads--I'll drag my butt up to the concession stand and order a Heileman's Special Export beer."
CROTON-ON-HUDSON, New York. Caitlin Morgan has dreamed about attending Wellesley College, her mother's alma mater, almost as long as she can remember.
"Mom took me there when I was a little girl, and I just fell in love with the place," says the high school junior as she enters the storefront office of an SAT test-preparation company in this tony Westchester County suburb.
But Caitlin's dream may fall victim to the iron laws of demographics. The high school class of 2008 will produce more college applications than any in U.S. history, and 57% of those will be written by young women. The odds of getting into the more prestigious women's colleges have accordingly never been longer.
So what is Caitlin doing about it? In addition to cramming her summer schedule full of community service projects such as teaching synchronized swimming to homeless men, she is trying a new sport, one she hopes will give her an edge when the Wellesley admissions committee reviews her file--roller derby.
"So many girls from the better prep schools have field hockey and lacrosse on their resumes," says Caitlin's mother Linda, an investment banker with a charm bracelet that could hold a small Texas chain gang. "We wanted something that would make our daughter stand out."
Long derided as the distaff equivalent of professional wrestling, roller derby is increasingly being adopted by young women who need a "plus factor" to get into their school of choice. Yan-Lan Lian is the overachieving daughter of immigrant parents who has already performed a solo concert at Carnegie Hall, received several patents and won the national Spelling Bee, but feels there is a gap in her resume that only roller derby can fill.
"It is a fun game, if you don't mind the stitches," she says of the scars she bears on her forehead and cheeks. "I feel a pretty face is less important to the Dean of Admissions at Stanford than a diverse background with a variety of interests."
Caitlin and Yan-Lan compete weekly in the tough College Prep Roller Derby League here where the minimum SAT score is 750 verbal, 700 math. "When the jam is on, I want to know that my teammates could perform a quadratic equation on me if go flying over the rail," says Morgan, who plays for the Westchester County Witches.
As a "jammer", Morgan scores a point for the Witches each time she passes a member of the opposing team. Lian is a "blocker" for the Croton Cramp, and tries to prevent jammers from passing by throwing elbows and checking her opponents onto the track or into the rail.
Admissions officers at top schools say that the competition for a limited number of slots at their schools can be vicious, and that parents are justified in seeking that extra "edge". "Frankly, I don't think an Emily Dickinson would get into Mt. Holyoke these days unless she had something besides 'How dreary to be Somebody, How public like a Frog!' on her transcript," says Elinor Walton, Dean of Admissions at the top-ranked women's college in western Massachusetts. "I think we'd wait-list her and tell her to spend a year arm-wrestling or candlepin bowling to round herself out a little."
When asked if she would be willing to name her favorite non-roller derby sports teams in order to provide "tags" for FoxSports.com, Walton happily obliged. "I like the Red Sox, the Patriots and the Celtics," she said with a mischievous smile, "but the team that really twists my panty hose is the Bruins. As a defeatist intellectual with low self-esteem, how could I not be in love with a team that trades away Joe Thornton the year he wins the Hart Trophy winner for Manny, Moe and Jack of the Pep Boys, or whoever San Jose gave us?"
For Caitlin Morgan, roller derby adds up to good clean fun and a standout resume, says her mother, even if it means putting thousands of dollars of orthodonture at risk. "We can always buy Caitlin new teeth," she says, "but getting into the right college is something you only get one shot at."
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
