{"id":46956,"date":"2025-08-06T04:23:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T04:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/46956\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T04:23:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T04:23:10","slug":"seattle-nhl-team-mascot-has-a-close-encounter-with-a-brown-bear-during-video-shoot-in-alaska","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/46956\/","title":{"rendered":"Seattle NHL team mascot has a close encounter with a brown bear during video shoot in Alaska"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A brown bear charged at the Seattle NHL\u2019s team mascot in a close encounter caught on camera in Alaska.<\/a><\/p>\n

Seattle Kraken\u2019s blue-haired troll mascot<\/a>, named Buoy, and forward John Hayden were fly-fishing in Katmai National Park as part of a trip promoting youth hockey when the bear approached, video released by the team shows.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo bears or trolls were hurt in the making, always respect wildlife in their natural habitat,\u201d a post on the team\u2019s social media accounts said.<\/p>\n

Knee-deep in a shallow river, they wore waders and other fly-fishing gear. Hayden had been fishing, but a guide quickly took the rod from him.<\/p>\n

The bear charged <\/a>toward the mascot, splashing water, but turned away before making contact as Hayden, Buoy and the film crew waded back to shore through a gentle current.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

The bear charged at Seattle Kraken\u2019s blue-haired troll mascot, named Buoy, and forward John Hayden in Katmai National Park<\/p>\n

Brown bears commonly feast on salmon in the Brooks River in Katmai National Park, gobbling them as they leap upstream over Brooks Falls to spawn. <\/p>\n

The park, nearly 300 miles southwest of Anchorage and inaccessible by road, is home to the annual \u201cFat Bear Week\u201d contest celebrating the bears as they fatten up for the winter.<\/p>\n

The NHL team said it didn\u2019t intend to involve the bear in filming but included it in a video posted to social media. Organizers had hired guides for safety.<\/p>\n

\"Brown<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Brown bears commonly feast on salmon in the Brooks River in Katmai National Park, gobbling them as they leap upstream over Brooks Falls to spawn (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cBears are everywhere at Brooks Falls and, like, this is their territory,\u201d said Kraken Partnership Marketing Director Melissa O\u2019Brochta, who also recorded the encounter from shore. \u201cThey\u2019re also super used to seeing humans. So I wasn\u2019t scared.\u201d<\/p>\n

A troll might have been a different story.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to blame it on Buoy,\u201d Hayden said on the video afterward. \u201cThey were pretty interested in his look.\u201d <\/p>\n

The run-in happened on June 25 as part of an annual trip organized by the Bristol Bay Native Corporation in Anchorage, Alaska, with events that promote youth ice hockey. Alaska does not have its own NHL team; the closest teams are in Seattle and Vancouver, Canada.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-46956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}