I was discussing one of my favorite subjects, sports jerseys, with an acquaintance the other day, and I recounted the story of a crazy hockey inter-period mascot game I had seen several years ago. While I was attending graduate school in Seattle, some friends and I went to see a minor league hockey game on mascot night. I cannot remember whether we knew the mascots would be playing hockey between periods, but it was so hilarious, it would be worth a $500 R/T plane ticket to Seattle on a key weekend to catch this game in 2010.
All my favorites were there: Shneedle the Space Needle; the Mariners' Moose; and the Husky Dawg (of course). A few were just silly, like a giant blow up owl from Hooters, and another blow up cell phone from AT&T or some other such concern. Those blow up ones had a hard time moving around on the ice. My favorite was the poor woman dressed up as the Ivar's clam. I couldn't find any photographic evidence of the clam's exploits on the ice, but in doing some research I found that Ivar's has some cool old clam mascot TV ads on their web site.
If you check out the link above you will see that the clams have no arms, so you can imagine that made holding a hockey stick somewhat problematic. I don't think she could see very well thru her costume, and she spent most of the time skating aimlessly around the rink, trying to get out of the way of the more out of control mascots on skates.
If you take the time to look at the youtube link below, you will find that by 2009, they discovered that mascots + skates + sticks = trouble, and they decided that broomball was a safer option.
And no, I do not have, nor do I need, a Seattle Thunderbirds Jersey, however............
Latest mascot hockey at Seattle Thunderbirds game
