The Icemen Evolved

Some may see this title and think that I've gone into human anthropology, but I assure you that I have zero training in that subject. That's not to say I wouldn't be interested in it, but I simply have no claim to being any sort of subject matter expert. It won't matter here, though, because this article is about the ECHL's Jacksonville Icemen and not ancient ancestors. The ECHL Icemen have been busy thus far this summer as they're going to look different next season with an assortment of new logos to prepare for the franchise's upcoming 10th Anniversary Season in Jacksonville, Florida! So what do these new Icemen look like?

"This rebrand is about more than a new look - it's a reflection of how much this community has embraced the Icemen over the last decade," Icemen Owner and CEO Andy Kaufmann said on Thursday. "Jacksonville has given us so much, and as we head into our 10th Anniversary Season, we wanted a brand that truly represents the city and the fans who've supported us every step of the way."

Personally, it never made much sense to have a parka-clad hockey player as a logo for a team that plays in Florida. Those two things - parkas and Florida - just don't go together normally, and it looks like this rebrand will take the Icemen in a whole new direction visually!

The Icemen are now yetis rather than being parka-clad hockey players, and one has to wonder how much effort The Barn Creative put in when coming up with this "new idea". I get that abominable snowman are known for existing in cold climates, but the legend came from the Himalayas where they lived in mountains. The last time I checked, there are no moutains in and around Jacksonville.

However, it seems that one needs to notice the details for this redesign to make sense. The Barn Creative's Nick Matarese explained that the "Yeti foot transforms into the shape of the state of Florida" while ECHL Commissioner Ryan Crelin pointed out that "the prior logo was carried forward from the membership in Evansville, Indiana before relocating to Jacksonville."

The fun part is that no one has ever complained about the Icemen being in Jacksonville with that name, and that's what makes minor-professional hockey so fun. For a state that has ECHL teams called the Solar Bears and the Everblades, having a team that regularly sees 80F days in December and January embracing the cold and ice is fun. And minor-pro hockey should be completely about having fun.

The team will likely have newly-coloured jerseys at the very least as iceberg blue, black, and snow white at the new colour palette with gray and navy blue being removed. With a newer, fiercer logo, there likely will be a mascot update at some point as well, but the Icemen can improve their marketing and visual recognition with this fun redesign. It doesn't fit Jacksonville's persona as a city, but that's why it works so well. It's fun, it's modern, and it belongs to Jacksonville.

Overall, I don't hate it, but I appreciate the Icemen putting their own spin on the logos to make it Jacksonville's own. The Barn Creative did good work updating the logo and converting the old logo into the new yeti while coming up with the state-shaped footprint. I'm curious to see what the jerseys will look like in the new colour palette, but the Icemen should look pretty good with their new logos next season!

And we didn't need an anthropology degree to explain this evolution!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

Trading Hockey For Laughs

I'll be completely honest in saying that I'm not even paying attention to hockey today. Normally, I spend a little time reading news stories and scrolling through social media for something that catches my attention, but today is not one of those days as my plans this evening will see me sitting in a park under sunshine while listening to a handful of comedians tell their best jokes. It's not often I buy early for comedy shows, but the Great Outdoors Comedy Festival was one that I couldn't pass up based on tonight's comedians and marquee act!

If you're not aware, Winnipeg will play host to the Great Outdoors Comedy Festival for the next three days as comedians like Aziz Ansari, Pete Davidson, Jeff Arcuri, Matt Rife, and Adam Ray as Dr. Phil take the stage. Undoubtedly, this will be a heckuva weekend for laughs in the Manitoba capital, and it starts tonight with Ryan Hamilton, John Crist, and one my favorite comics in Jim Gaffigan!

I first really figured out who Jim Gaffigan was thanks to the 2001 Broken Lizard film Super Troopers where Jim Gaffigan plays the unsuspecting victim to Mac's and Foster's "Cat Game" in a scene.


According to an interview done with Interview Magazine's Ben Barna, Broken Lizard had given the part for which Gaffigan auditioned to someone else, but offered him the "Cat Game" role as a part to remain in the film. Jay Chandrasekhar, who plays Officer Ramathorn, said in the interview, "Jim was originally going to play one of the local cops, but we ran out of spaces. He was not a famous stand-up at the time. Thank God he did it, because he became massive."

That appearance, along with the corresponding joke, gave Gaffigan some notoriety to the point where people were saying it to him after his shows. Gaffigan told Barna, "There was a stretch when it felt like everyone who approached me after a stand up show would do the 'meow' thing to me. 'Great show, meow. How you doing meow?' Mostly guys in their twenties that were either drunk or stoned or both."

Since that time, Gaffigan's popularity has grown immensely as his comedy delves into being a parent, being married, and observations of things to which virtually everyone can relate. I've watched a number of his comedy specials and found myself in fits of laughter at a lot of his material. When it was announced that he was the headliner for the Friday night lineup of the Great Outdoors Comedy Festival, buying a ticket was a very easy decision for me.

I don't know about John Crist or Ryan Hamilton, pictured in the middle and on the right, respectively, in the lede image, but I did see a few Ryan Hamilton bits on Instagram where he was pretty funny. Crist seems a little edgier in his comedy, but he still has some funny bits as well. In short, tonight should be an entertaining and hilarious night at Assiniboine Park in beautiful weather as the Winnipeg edition of the Great Outdoors Comedy Festival gets underway!

If anything important in the hockey world happens, I'll get caught up tomorrow. Tonight, I'm going to have a great time at the Great Outdoors Comedy Festival. Enjoy your evenings, folks, because I'm expecting a great night of laughs with Jim Gaffigan and friends!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

The Hockey Show - Episode 721

The Hockey Show, Canada's only campus-produced radio show that strictly talks hockey, is back with some new introductions, some more hockey stories, and some opinions from our two hosts about everything happening in hockey. It's been a fairly quiet week for a lot of the hockey world as schedules were released for the NHL today which flooded social media, but there were still stories to hit the wires this week that need to be discussed. Our hosts will dive into those newsworthy pieces tonight on The Hockey Show at 5:30pm CT!

Tonight, Teebz and Jason will criss-cross the globe as they look at stories from a number of places. They'll discuss failed executives becoming senior advisors, Winnipeg locking up Cole Perfetti, a pile of notable Canada West and U SPORTS men's hockey players landing in professional leagues, Victory+ losing a major client, a weird situation in Ukraine, a potential new destination in Australia, and anything else that may cross their paths. There's lots to discuss and about which our hosts will opine including a few non-hockey stories, so make sure you're ready to roll for The Hockey Show at 5:30pm CT on one of 101.5 FM, Channel 718 on MTS TV, or via UMFM.com!

If you live outside Winnipeg and want to listen, we have options! The UMFM website's streaming player works well if you want to listen online. We also recommend Radio Garden if you need an easy-to-use online stream. If you're more of an app person, we recommend you use the TuneIn app found on the App Store or Google Play Store.

If you have questions, you can email all show queries and comments to hockeyshow@umfm.com! Tweet me anytime with questions you may have by hitting me up at @TeebzHBIC on Twitter! I'm here to listen to you, so make your voice heard! And because both Teebz and Jason are on the butterfly app where things are less noisy, you can find Teebz here and Jason here on Bluesky!

Tonight, Teebz and Jason chat unearned jobs, good deals, good opportunities, bad economics, weird conscription, new venues, and much more exclusively on 101.5 UMFM and on the UMFM.com web stream!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

Three In Three Days

I don't know where the NHL stumbled onto the idea of having people act as "senior advisors", but this is now the third-straight day where a senior advisor has been named to an executive running a team. Aside from having experience doing a job, all three of these senior advisors have yet to prove that all their experience and knowledge matters since none of the teams they ran won anything. Today, you can add Steve Yzerman's name to the "senior advisor" roster in the NHL after he stepped down as general manager and executive vice-president of the Red Wings to work in an advisory role for Red Wings governor and CEO Chris Ilitch.

I laid out the cases for both John Davidson and Kevyn Adams as to why their hirings seemed questionable, and this move by Yzerman feels entirely the same. In seven years with Yzerman at the helm, the Detroit Red Wings never qualified for the playoffs, he made 74 draft selections and saw just six play more than 100 NHL games, and he made 65 trades and 181 signings in those seven years. That's a lot of players that went to Detroit for them to never reach the playoffs.

"Steve's lifetime of contributions to the Red Wings has meant more to this franchise than words can truly express, and I have the highest level of respect for his continued commitment to our organization," Ilitch said in a statement. "We are thankful for Steve's hard work and dedication as general manager and are grateful knowing Steve will remain where he belongs — here with the Red Wings family."

That statement is something you'd hear at a jersey retirement, not for a guy who clearly failed in his job. I understand that there's the utmost respect for Yzerman based on his playing career in a Red Wings jersey, but his management career in a Red Wings office is forgettable. Ilitch can pay respect to him if he likes, but hockey is a business first and Yzerman's business acumen reminds me a lot of Seinfeld's Cosmo Kramer. How he lasted seven years is remarkable!

That leads me to asking how and why Yzerman was named as a senior advisor for Ilitch when Chris Ilitch has a bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Michigan, became the CEO of Ilitch Companies in 2004, sits as chairman and CEO of the Detroit Tigers, and oversees both business and hockey operations decisions for the Detroit Red Wings. If anything, Ilitch should be the senior advisor to Steve Yzerman based on education and experience!

Perhaps there's a contractual reason for the change in titles as Yzerman may still have time on his current contract to fulfill. If he wanted to stay and Ilitch is fine with paying him, so be it as that's Ilitch's decision. Again, I'm not sure what Yzerman will be advising Ilitch on, but there must be something on which Ilitch wants his input. As I stated with Davidson and Adams, more experienced and knowledgeable hockey minds working together in Detroit should make things better as long as everyone is on the same page.

For the last time, though, I'll make this plea: can we stop calling executives who failed "senior advisors"? These men haven't shown any significant ability to build, develop, or manage a team with championship aspirations, so making them an advisor in any capacity feels more like a charitable hiring than a smart front-office addition. Just call them a "consultant" and pay them to do whatever it is that the team needs done. They're not coming in and changing the direction of any franchise with their skills and knowledge, so why are they given a title like they're going to be playing an important role?

I said it yesterday, so I'll say it again today: this is a trend that needs to end quickly. Hiring a guy who failed at his previous management and/or executive job doesn't make him a "senior advisor". Medical students who graudate with a 2.0 GPA are still called "doctors", but I'm not all that confident in taking advice from those "medical advisors". End the madness of "senior advisor" hirings in the NHL!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

This Is A Trend That Can End

I truly believe that people get hired to do jobs because they have the skills and abilities to do said job. Yes, there are always areas where can improve and get stronger in their skillsets, but employers want the most qualified people in place for things to run smoothly. In the last two days, however, it seems that two teams have decided to add experience to their front offices as the Buffalo Sabres, as seen yesterday, and the Boston Bruins have decided to hire senior advisors. Understandably, John Davidson is bringing his knowledge and experiences to Buffalo to help the Sabres, but it's certainly a head-scratching move to see the Bruins hiring former Sabres general manager Kevyn Adams as their new senior advisor.

Again, Davidson fits the role well as he's 73 years-old, has 16 years of experience as a high-ranking hockey executive, and is 13 years older than Sabres GM Jarmo Kekalainen. With the Bruins hiring Adams as their senior advisor, they're getting a guy who has worked in various roles throughout the Buffalo Sabres organization since 2009, but has only been a front office executive since 2019 where he worked as Vice-President for a season before becoming the general manager in 2020 for six seasons. In none of those seasons since 2019 did the Sabres make the playoffs, but he did add significant pieces.

What makes this "senior advisor" role so weird is that Adams is 51 years-old compared to Bruins GM Don Sweeney who is 59 years-old, and Sweeney has held the role of assistant general manager or general manager for the Bruins since 2009! Adams, who has six years in some sort of management capacity is now a "senior advisor" to a guy who is eight years older than him and has eleven more years of management experience! How on earth does that make sense?

"As we continue to build our staff, these changes recognize the hard work and growth of people within our organization while also adding experienced voices to our group," Sweeney said in a statement today.

Kevyn Adams made a total of 41 trades in his five-and-a-half years as the Sabres' GM while signing 141 players to deals. He made 47 selections at NHL Entry Drafts, including eight first-round picks, and only three players of those 47 chosen have played more than 100 games in the NHL. I get that he sat in the big chair in Buffalo, but his résumé screams "inexperienced"! How is he a "senior advisor"?

Just because a guy has a handful of years doing a job doesn't mean he should be advising anyone in another organization on how to do that person's job. I get that there are just a few guys who have the résumé who can step in and provide real advice to current GMs - Scotty Bowman and David Poile come to mind - but naming Kevyn Adams as a "senior advisor" to Don Sweeney seems like a stretch. He can be an advisor if the Bruins really want, but "senior advisor"?

This is a trend that needs to end quickly. I get that teams are hunting for strategic advantages, but hiring a guy who most people feel was underqualified for his previous job doesn't make him a "senior advisor". Kevyn Adams has experience and I cannot dispute that, but medical students who graudate with a 2.0 GPA are still called "doctors". And I'm not sure I'd be hiring those "medical advisors".

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!