The Texans’ Toro, the Astros’ Orbit, the Rockets’ Clutch and UH’s Shasta. If Houston gets an NHL team, what would you want the mascot to be?
Houston Chronicle
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Houston may finally be getting an NHL team.
That’s not news: Earlier this year, billionaire Dan Friedkin’s business group agreed to pay a $2 billion fee to bring a new professional hockey franchise to Texas, and the league said it could announce by the end of the year whether Houston or Austin won the expansion sweepstakes.
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I’ll admit I’m no sportswriter, and I couldn’t begin to explain what it takes to build a professional hockey team, with its arena deals, owners’ votes and Zambonis, in the country’s fourth-largest city. But I love talking about how Houston sees itself in the teams that generations of us have cheered for and loved, and what those names, colors and mascots say about who we are as a city.
I mean, we’ve worn plenty of names over the years: the Texans, Astros, Rockets, Dynamo, Dash, and, soon, the Comets. And we’ve lost a few over the years, like the Buffaloes, a minor-league baseball team that played in the East End, and, of course, the Aeros, a name that graced two different Houston hockey teams.
So, I can’t help but speculate about the identity our new team might take on, if we do get one. I humbly, and with no authority whatsoever, submit the following list for our readers’ and any hockey executives who happen to subscribe to this newsletter’s consideration.
The Fighting Crawfish
Few things unite this city like crawfish season, when backyards and parking lots across town fill with folding tables covered in newspaper and steaming piles of mudbugs, potatoes, corn and sausage.
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We’ve made it a tradition to boil and eat these spicy little critters by the pound, but they’re quite scrappy. I can’t be the only one who’s been pinched once or twice by a soon-to-be boiled crawfish that escaped the cooler, right?
A Houston hockey team could, and should, embody that feisty attitude.
The X-Rays
Houston already has team names that play off the space program we’re so proud of, so we’d do right to honor the other world-class institution in our backyard.
The Texas Medical Center has saved countless lives and offered the world innovation after innovation. Why not offer the NHL a team that can see through an opponent’s defense? (Sorry for the bad joke.)
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Plus, imagine a goalie mask painted to look like a skull. It’d be sick.
The Wildcatters or the Barons
Bringing hockey to Houston would be a bit of a wildcat move, so nodding to the risk-takers who made the city the world’s energy capital would be a natural fit. We’ve already had football teams named the Oilers and the Roughnecks.
If you prefer an oil-related nickname with a little more polish, I offer this: the Barons.
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The Wranglers
If the Barons are a little too… River Oaks for you, the Wranglers might be more your speed. This name honors Houston’s rodeo roots, the ranchland (soon-to-be master-planned communities) that surround the city and every Houstonian who owns a pair of boots that collect dust rodeo season each March.
I like the image of a cowboy on ice skates, lasso in hand, chasing down a puck.
What animal or object would you choose to represent a Houston NHL team?
A crawfish? A X-Ray? Tell us your pick below.
The Grackles
I saved my favorite for last.
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No creature captures the Houston spirit quite like the great-tailed grackle, those loud, glossy black birds that rule over every strip-mall parking lot in town by the thousands. Unbothered by heat, traffic or humans, they travel in rowdy packs and swarm you at the first sight of a dropped morsel of food.
A team tough enough to take the ice in the Texas heat deserves a mascot to match, so allow me to introduce Gunner the Grackle, who would spend every home game stealing nachos from the visitors’ section.
What would you name a potential Houston NHL team? Email me your best ideas, and we’ll share our favorites in a future edition.
What is your Houston question?