I had fun yesterday writing about stupid sports team names, so I’m going to do one more, this time for the NHL. Of course ice hockey requires somewhat different traits or attributes in order to be effective: Power, speed, skating, intimidation, toughness, balance, grace and so forth. But ice hockey also has another element that teams often try to capitalize on with their name which is the “ice” element. Being that it sort of separates the sport from others (like field hockey, lacrosse or even soccer, all of which have similar rules and comparable game mechanics but lack the ice and skating), I’ll give bonus points to team names that effectively incorporate the concept into their monikers.

Good Names

• New York Rangers – An acceptable name for a team for the same basic reasons as discussed in the baseball dissection: Protection, strength, courage, etc. Why again with the red, white and blue I’m not sure, but colors aren’t the point here, the name is so it gets a pass.
• Philadelphia Flyers – The name flyers, I presume, means “one who flies.” It conveys motion and speed which works for a hockey team.
• Pittsburgh Penguins – This one is kind of questionable because I don’t know that penguins on ice are very graceful or fast… from what I’ve seen in nature shows they’re kind of clumsy and waddling. But penguins do slide on their bellies pretty smoothly and they swim like crazy, plus they have that ice connection that just works for a hockey team so I’ll let it (ahem) slide.
• Boston Bruins – A bruin is basically another name for a brown bear so the team is essentially the Boston Bears. As has been established with the football team, bears are big, strong, imposing and at times quite cunning so it works, plus the alliteration angle is a nice touch.
• Buffalo Sabres – I almost demoted this name because it annoys me that the team is the “Sabres” and yet they spend most of their time with logos and what not acting like they think their name is the “Buffaloes” since they’re always having buffalo imagery on their uniforms. One of these days maybe a team will play in Buffalo that just calls themselves the Buffalo Buffaloes and get it over with. Still, Sabres is a solid name and even manages to evoke some sense of hockey since the metal rail on a pair of ice skates is called the blade so I can’t fault them for stupid marketing. And even if it makes no sense, buffaloes are pretty decent mascots. (As a side note, this page suggests that the original founders of the team chose Sabres because they specifically wanted to avoid the common Buffalo/bison tie-in, so there’s some irony for you).
• Carolina Hurricanes – Born from the relocated Hartford Whalers, they are located in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina which certainly sees hurricanes from time to time, so it has a local connection. Hurricanes are powerful storms that can bowl over anything in their path, so as a team name I’d say it’s pretty suitable for hockey or most any other sport I can think of.
• Florida Panthers – As has been mentioned numerous times in these discussions, powerful carnivores of the animal kingdom are usually good team names. Panthers may not have any remote geographic link to Florida, but they certainly make for a quality team name.
• Tampa Bay Lightning – According to the MSU page, Tampa Bay is the lightning capital of the world. Wikipedia disputes this and cites this article as evidence that Singapore actually has the most occurrences of lighting strikes per year. Wikipedia does however mention this tidbit: “The United States is home to ‘Lightning Alley,’ a group of states in the American Southeast that collectively see more lightning strikes per year than any other place in the US. The most notable state in Lightning Alley is Florida.” So let’s assume the name is locally appropriate, Lightning in an of itself isn’t such a bad name for a team, being intense, powerful and striking suddenly, without warning. That works for a hockey team so it’s a solid name all around.
• Nashville Predators – Even if you dispense with the specifics, the general term for all creatures on top of their section of the food chain works quite well as a team name, especially in the NHL.
• Colorado Avalanche – Originally the Quebec Nordiques (I won’t even bother with that one), they relocated to Denver and named themselves the Avalanche. While the MLB team in the same area went with “Rockies” to questionable effect, Avalanche is a nearly perfect name for an ice hockey team. Not only is it somewhat locally specific (again with the mountains, although I can’t find any specific data about how many avalanches really occur in Colorado on average) but it has the ice connection and an avalanche is certainly an intimidating, powerful force of nature that can absolutely bury you if you get in its path. Sounds fitting to me, even if the team doesn’t always live up to the name.
• Dallas Stars – Considering that the original team name was the Minnesota North Stars and that Texas is the Lone Star State, it’s one of the best relocation name adjustments I can think of. Not only that but a star, in sports, is generally a predominant or exceptionally talented player so it certainly works to classify the whole team that way right in the name.
• Los Angeles Kings – Unlike the MLB’s Royals, the LA team makes this work by being specific enough with their royalty to give the impression of power, control and to a certain extent victory. It’s not the best name in this section, but it works well enough.
• Phoenix Coyotes – Locally specific (Arizona is commonly associated with desert areas and coyotes are likewise associated with the desert even though their habitats are generally much more varied) and a predatory animal at least when in the wild (coyotes are actually very adaptable omnivores who are usually scavengers in urban areas), despite some misconceptions about the animal, the general gist is on track and it works passably.
• San Jose Sharks – The ice connection is tenuous at best (water/ice) so let’s ignore that, but there are plenty of sharks in the Pacific Ocean and sharks themselves are almost exclusively thought of as sly, dangerous, merciless predators. Local connection and effective imagery equals good name.

Marginal Names

• New Jersey Devils – Similar to the MLB Angels and Padres or the NFL Saints, using theological concepts as team names strikes me as curious. Identifying yourself with the incarnation of evil seems less than ideal as well. But I suppose a “devil” would be frightening, intimidating and potentially powerful so it’s not a total loss but this one rides the line between marginal and outright bad because, really, does anyone want to root for a devil? Actually, the MSU page says the name comes from a folk legend about a sasquatch-like beast called the “Jersey Devil” thought to roam the Garden State’s Pine Barrens. Still, they use the iconic barbed tail and horns commonly associated with a more hades-based interpretation of the name so the origin may be true, but it has been superseded by marketing or common misinterpretation.
• Atlanta Thrashers – Originally I thought the name was a very short-sighted use of a not-particularly-popular slang term which usually refers to a beating or an intense action of some kind (“Did you see Muhammad Ali thrash Foeman?”) but in fact the name is a reference to the Georgia state bird, the Brown Thrasher. Birds work pretty good as team names in some cases, but in this case the Brown Thrasher is a shy, rarely-seen bird who mostly hunts for grubs and seeds in piles of dry leaves on the ground. Brown Thrashers are mostly known for their singing which is considered to be quite beautiful, but quality singing voices isn’t much of a trait in hockey. Still, I’ll give them enough slack for locale-specific naming and the ambiguity of the name to keep them out of the Bad Names category.
• Chicago Blackhawks – The MSU page says:
  

  Original owner Frederic McLaughlin named the team in honor of the Black Hawk Battalion he served with in WWI. The unit was named after a Chief Black Hawk. The name was merged to ‘Blackhawks’ several years ago.

  Blackhawks certainly sounds like it would be a good name, and the origin sounds pretty inspired, in truth it doesn’t really work since Chief Black Hawk, while a regional historical figure, fought against the United States in the War of 1812 and the subsequent Black Hawk War—which resulted from his refusal to leave his native lands—left most of his men dead and found him taken captive. Still, he was a more or less heroic figure for Native Americans but the use of his anglicized name as a sports team is a bit questionable. While the Blackhawks, as Wikipedia points out, have managed to skirt most of the controversy surrounding Native American-themed sports teams, their logo marks the Indian angle clearly; why couldn’t the logo be of a (literally) black hawk? Hawks would make for a good sports icon and the ambiguity of the name makes it perfectly acceptable to make this transition. Unlike other teams like the Redskins or Indians who would need to manufacture a whole new identity behind a whole new name, the Blackhawks could remain constant but lose any hint of offensiveness. Their lack of willingness to do so (probably based on some moronic sense of tradition) automatically drops them to marginal.

• Calgary Flames – So originally it was the Atlanta Flames, so named from the fire set by General Sherman that burned Atlanta during the Civil War. Eventually the team moved to Calgary and kept the name. Now, “flames” as an element of fire can be sort of intimidating or at least dangerous but flames and ice hockey… well, let’s just say if you can abstract the team concept to a bunch of individual balls of flame trying to skate around the ice, you can imagine that they’d have a hard time winning very often what with all the melted ice which would likely extinguish any fireballs. So not a downright terrible name, but pretty dumb. MSU says the name is supposed to refer to Alberta’s petroleum industry now that they’ve relocated but there is but the thinnest of threads that can possibly link petroleum to fire (except that petroleum is a fairly decent fuel for flames, which is like saying my team is going to be the San Jose Rockets due to all the technology industries in the area), so no dice.
• Vancouver Canucks – The MSU site says that they got their name from a Canadian folk hero who was supposedly a great logger and in his spare time played hockey named Johnny Canuck. I guess he was sort of an anti-Uncle Sam. The name is weird because it’s perfectly acceptable for Canadians to refer to themselves as Canucks. However, if used by a non-Canadian it can be seen as derogatory, almost like an ethnic slur. But in general I guess it’s like the New York Yankees which means it isn’t great but it just manages to not be so bad as to land in the Crummy category. What almost puts it over the top is the ridiculous logo they sport these days which is like… I don’t know, some sort of deformed seal being broken in half? Whatever it is, it’s stupid so it’s a good thing we’re judging team names and not logos.

Crummy Names

• New York Islanders – Ha. Ha. Get it? New York is a bunch of islands. So they’re Islanders. Do you get it? Yeah, me neither.
• Montreal Canadiens – This name is dumb like the Yankees only more so… kind of like the Houston Texans. The official name is “Le Club de Hockey Canadien” which translates literally into something like “The Canadian Hockey Team” which is just as stupid as the Mets only in French which makes even more annoying. Plus the myriad nicknames fans have come up with are annoying as well. I get that you are limited with your wit when your team name is Canadian Hockey Team but the Habs? It’s short for another French nickname, Les Habitants which was used sort of similarly by early French immigrants to the way early US immigrants used “Settlers” or “Pilgrims.” Originally the team only had players who were French-Canadians, but as anyone might have guessed, that is no longer the case. Regardless, it’s just a mess of a name and so it gets the big thumbs down.
• Ottawa Senators – I can think of few things that strike fear in the heart less than elected governmental officials. Okay wait, I take that back. But generally speaking, a “Senator” does not evoke imposing visions of anything that might be beneficial in a hockey game, unless red tape suddenly becomes a new slang term for some kind of wicked hockey play. That they were named after an old school team is no excuse, old team names were often idiotic (see yesterday’s post regarding the Pittsburgh Pirates originally being known as the “Innocents”).
• Toronto Maple Leafs – Okay, I see where they were going here. Maple leaves are region-specific, they’re a national symbol and they help clearly identify the team as Canadian. Fine. But for one thing, it’s spelled wrong. The plural of “Leaf” is “Leaves,” not “Leafs,” so deduct points there. Also, what’s so special in hockey terms about a leaf? Oh yeah, now I remember: Nothing. The MSU site says this about the team name:
  

  Two possible reasons: (1) Then owner Conn Smythe drew inspiration from an old Toronto team called the East Maple Leaves; (2) when Conn Smythe bought the Toronto St. Patricks, his first act was to rename the team after the Maple Leaf Regiment of the First World War, as well as for the maple leaf on the Canadian flag. Originally, the team was known as the Arenas, then renamed St. Patricks, supposedly to attract the Irish.

  Interesting, but being named after an army regiment only works if the army regiment had an imposing name to begin with. Which they didn’t.

• Washington Capitals – See, Washington is the capital of the US, right? So they’re Capitals. Except a “Capital” doesn’t apply to a person or a team and a city or town that is the official seat of government has no connotations that are useful in hockey whatsoever. Possibly even worse than Senators in terms of team names.
• Columbus Blue Jackets – Read this account of the Blue Jackets’ team name origin and I challenge you to come up with a rational reason why any of that should have resulted in such an insipid name as the “Blue Jackets.” A play on the insect yellowjackets? Because the team owner wanted the name to contain a reference to the color blue? Maybe as a reference to northern soldiers in the Civil War (incidentally, referencing the Civil War in any sport where teams exist from both northern and southern states is generally the stupidest thing you could possibly do when naming a team)? Whatever the reason, the name is horrible.
• Detroit Red Wings – Supposedly named as an homage to another team, the Montreal Winged Wheelers and found to be suitable for Motor City, the end result doesn’t quite work. I grant that this name could easily be marginal instead of crummy because wings suggest flight and speed but how a specifically colored wing by itself is of any sort of value in hockey (or anywhere else for that matter) is not clear and therefore the name is, in my estimation, not good.
• St. Louis Blues – Supposedly named after the W. C. Handy song of the same name, it works on a local level and as a clever re-use of the song name, but as a hockey team name? Blues is just as bad as Reds if referring to the color, and given that the Blues use a musical note in their logo, I guess they’re going for the musical style connotation instead. But this is just as bad because there is nothing about Blues music that would be hockey-related. Except as what their fans sing when they play like they have for the last couple of years. Oh! Snap! I went there! Okay, I’m done, and so is this name.
• Edmonton Oilers – Named as a reflection of the importance of the oil industry in the area, the problem with the name is that an “Oiler,” whom I suppose is one who extracts or mines or otherwise deals with oil, is in no way shape or form fitting as a parallel or even an associate for a hockey player. Locally specific but contextually stupid.
• Minnesota Wild – I admit that the name “Wild” isn’t as terrible as, say, the Blue Jackets. But still, it’s an adjective masquerading as a noun which bugs me and the Wild don’t even really act like their name should be the Wild because their uniforms, logo and marketing efforts seem to be more akin to the Minnesota Wildcats. Which would have been a perfectly acceptable team name. Instead they went with Wild and their team name sucks. What can you do?
• Anaheim Ducks – I thought long and hard about this one because on one hand, there is nothing inherently graceful, fast, intimidating or tough about a duck. There is also, as far as I know, no special connection between Anaheim and ducks. But I understand where the name came from, because the team was originally owned by Disney who put out a movie called “The Mighty Ducks” about a junior hockey team and they also produced an animated series featuring hockey playing ducks who were I guess also superheroes. It was a product tie-in but when the Disney connection faded, the name didn’t work so they simply dropped the “Mighty” and became the Ducks. But, again, Ducks is a lousy hockey team name and I haven’t given other teams slack for their intentions so it’s officially a crummy name.

Of course you’re always free to disagree and offer your own opinions. The comments section is open.

My dad wrote a very funny piece about the appropriateness NFL team names. I thought I’d take the concept and run with it and examine baseball team names.

Basically the premise here is that team names should either be something that evokes a sense of something beneficial to the game being played (in the case of baseball: Speed, power, teamwork, cunning, heroism, etc) or it should be something specific to the home locale of the franchise so long as that evocation isn’t of something counter to those attributes that are beneficial. The Raleigh Sloths wouldn’t work, for example, even if Raleigh happened to have a lot of Sloths around because Sloths would be really pathetic at baseball.

Just ask Barry Bonds.

Anyway, here goes:

Good Names

• Baltimore Orioles – I’m not sure if there are a lot of orioles in the Baltimore area, my online research yielded little fruit, but orioles are fast, clever birds according to several sites so it works for the game. It would be a bad football or hockey name, but baseball is more forgiving of wussier animal mascots than other sports, being physical but also quite cerebral as well.
• Tampa Bay Devil Rays – The name is both relatively strong sounding as well as being a nickname for Manta Rays which work from the locale angle in Tampa Bay. Plus Manta Rays are fast swimmers, capable of impressive physical feats such as leaping high out of the water and sort of sailing for relatively long distances.
• Toronto Blue Jays – Like the Orioles, this works from a speed angle (although I don’t know that Blue Jays are particularly clever, judging by the number of cat-kills I see around our apartment complex) and I’ll give Toronto the benefit of the doubt that they actually have a significant number of Jays locally.
• Detroit Tigers – According to FactMonster.com they weren’t named after the jungle cat but instead named after another sports team, the Princeton Tigers football team based on the similarity of their socks. A stupid origin perhaps, but the adoption of a feral carnivore as a team moniker works for me and anyone else who wouldn’t think to look up how the Tigers got their name so it’s good.
• Texas Rangers – Rangers are supposed to be protectors, soldiers or roaming guardians and the name has been adopted by lots of people to evoke these kinds of feelings of power, confidence, cleverness and capability. I don’t know that the patriotic uniforms of the Rangers really match their moniker, but the name works okay. If it was me they’d have camouflage uniforms.
• Atlanta Braves – Their name actually refers to Native Americans (as evidenced by the tomahawk on their logo) but it is similar to using the term “Warriors” since that is what is meant by the term “Indian Braves” and while perhaps antiquated, it isn’t particularly offensive or inappropriate for the sport. Plus the name could always be changed to refer to the team as a group of people possessing the quality of bravery which is less as effective as a baseball name (courage in baseball is probably not the most useful trait although some memorable performances such as Kirk Gibson’s gimpy walk-off homer in the 1988 World Series could be classified as courageous or brave). In the end it’s a bit borderline, but we’ll leave it as a good name.
• Florida Marlins – Regionally specific, Marlins are known to fishermen as putting up a heck of a fight which is a pretty good comparison to make to a baseball team so it works quite well.
• Pittsburgh Pirates – Factmonster says that the Pirates were originally called The Innocents (a terrible team name) until they signed a player away from the Philadelphia Athletics and that team’s fans started calling Pittsburgh’s team “pirates” as a slam to the way they had obtained a popular player from them. Eventually the name came to be more literal and Pirates suggest craftiness, stealing (such as bases) and terrorizing foes so it works out in the end.
• St. Louis Cardinals – Missouri has a lot of Cardinals, they are fast and the name works from a local angle and as a strong symbol of the team. Good name.
• Seattle Mariners – This one almost didn’t make it to this category because while Seattle, as a major port, certainly can claim local association with mariners, I’m not sure what sailors have to bring to baseball. Except I’ve seen the Deadliest Catch so I know that sailors are tough sons of guns and generally fearless which are pretty good traits for a baseball player. A close call but I’ll give it to them, as long as they agree to stop calling themselves the “M’s” which is just sad.
• Arizona Diamondbacks – Another good locally-specific name with plenty of dangerous and ferocious connotations that work well as a team name.
• Colorado Rockies – I debated this one for a long time because while certainly the Rocky Mountains are regionally applicable for a team based in Colorado, naming your team after a mountain range is sort of a cop-out. Still, the Rockies (the mountains) are majestic, imposing, unforgiving, and typically symbols of steadfastness. So in a kind of pseudo symbolic way it works.
• San Francisco Giants – The name Giants suggest size, strength and intimidation, which works fine for a baseball (or any other sport, for the most part) team name. Not locally specific, but that’s good since the team is a transplant from New York.

Marginal or Questionable Names

• New York Yankees – Similar to the Vancouver Canucks, naming a team based off of a nickname for a country’s people is somewhat dicey. I suppose it could be argued that the name is regional since Yankee often refers to a northeastern citizen of the United States and New York is certainly in that region and it could also be argued that it is a patriotic name which invokes images of the best qualities of the American spirit. Those arguments would be weak, but you could make them.
• Kansas City Royals – I guess suggesting nobility can be inspiring for a sports team, but royalty really has little to do with athletic prowess and has absolutely nothing to do with Kansas City. Except that the name actually came from the American Royal Livestock Show held in Kansas City every year since 1899, according to Wikipedia. Naming a team after a livestock show is kind of dubious but it is locally specific so it sits right on the fence between really lame and just mostly lame. I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt for now.
• Minnesota Twins – Locally specific is fine, such as with the Twins who are named after the Twin Cities (St. Paul and Minneapolis) but Twins aren’t any better at baseball than anyone else so the end result, while well intentioned, is less than stellar.
• Chicago Cubs – Why cubs? Like my dad says, naming a team after a younger version of an animal that would be a much better team name (in this case the Bears, which works fine for the football team so why not the baseball team?) is pretty silly. Still, animal names and alliterations are better than some of the junk in the next section so we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt here, a little.
• Houston Astros – The team based out of Houston was originally called the Colt 45s, which being an intimidating firearm is a pretty decent name. Then NASA set up shop in Houston and in 1965 the team was renamed to honor that (probably due to the popularity of the space program at the time). The problem is that “Astro” isn’t really a noun, it’s more of an adjective unless you’re talking about the dog on The Jetsons, which I don’t think we should. At least the spirit of the team name which evokes concepts of speed, progress, intelligence and so on is in the right place, but the end result is only so-so.
• Milwaukee Brewers – Certainly locally-specific since Milwaukee is home to numerous beer breweries, I’m not convinced that (unlike the Steelers or Packers from football) a brewer suggests any quality that would be useful to a baseball player. Patience maybe? I dunno, although it may be salvaged somewhat due to the common correlation between baseball and beer, at least from a fan’s perspective.
• Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim – Never mind the stupid city madness in the team name, Angels is questionable because it’s hard to imagine how an Angel would suggest anything terrestrial which might be an asset to a baseball team. But Angels refers to the English translation of “Los Angeles” (City of the Angels) which makes it locally appropriate (if not factually appropriate) and I suppose—at least if you believe some cut rate Disney movie—a team of Angels would be pretty tough to beat. It still seems kind of iffy to me though.

Actively Ridiculous or Stupid Names

• Boston Red Sox – What does a colored sock have to do with anything? That’s like calling the Rangers the Blue Hats. Wow, a team named after a portion of their uniform. How… idiotic. That they also spelled “socks” wrong counts against them and that it is a shortened version of the double-whammy stupid and awkward “Red Stockings” just makes it worse.
• New York Mets – The name is short for the official name which is “New York Metropolitan Baseball Club, Inc.” The official name is patently lame and uninspired and the shortened version is therefore nonsensical.
• Philadelphia Phillies – The team was named as an homage to their home city which is passively stupid since everyone knows that the city names are almost always included when referring to a sports team. This is necessary to remove any ambiguity with other sports teams. If I say “The Giants sure suck this year” I could be referring to at least two major sports teams and probably a host of collegiate and amatuer-level teams. If I say, “The San Francisco Giants sure suck this year,” which almost everybody would say in most cases, my meaning is clear. Therefore the homage angle is not well thought out and since there is, to my knowledge, no such actual thing as a “Philly” (note that a female horse who has not yet reached sexual maturity is a Filly and in no way a fitting baseball team name unless your team is populated with young girls who have a strong interest in My Little Pony), that means the name fails on all levels.
• Washington Nationals – Stupid for the same reason as “Yankees” except even more so because no one that I’ve ever heard refers to an actual person as a “National” unless they preface it with a foreign country (such as “Chinese National”) and a team full of “Washington Nationals” when Washington isn’t a country strikes fear in the heart of… no one, really.
• Chicago White Sox – Moronic for the exact same reasons as the Red Sox, all the way down to the unnecessary misspelling.
• Cleveland Indians – The name itself is a little uncomfortable to begin with. Unlike “Braves,” Indians is not only not really the preferred term any longer but an Indian in an of itself shouldn’t necessarily confer any of the attributes a baseball team strives for. Then you throw in the team logo which is a miserable caricature of a Native American somewhat akin to the old cartoons and their exaggerated portrayals of African Americans (which would be absolutely unacceptable in modern times, by the way) and it starts to get really uncomfortable. Then you find out that Cleveland’s team name was originally the Spiders (not altogether a bad name for a baseball team) but they were the first to sign a Native American player in Louis Francis Sockalexis so racist fans began referring to the team—disparagingly—as the Indians. After Sockalexis left the league and eventually passed away, the team name was officially changed as an “homage” which, considering that the name was meant to be insulting in the first place, is questionable at best. At this point, it’s almost as bad as the NFL’s Redskins.
• Cincinnati Reds – The actual name was originally the Cincinnati Red Stockings which automatically moves it down here based on the previous rants regarding the Red and White Sox. Items of clothing don’t make good sports team names, period. But when the Reds joined the National League, they dropped the Stockings and were just the Reds, which is also stupid since colors aren’t better names than clothing items. That Reds is also a derogatory term for communists, it just gets worse. Also? The Reds’ logo is among the worst ever, probably stemming from the fact that their name was ludicrous to begin with.
• Oakland Athletics – The common nickname, “The A’s” is pretty dumb but not nearly as dumb as “Athletics” which generally doesn’t even refer to a person (who ever said, “That guy is an athletic!”) because it’s an adjective. Team names that are adjectives are inherently stupid and even though Athleticism is good from a baseball standpoint, there has to be something that possesses that trait for it to work.
• Los Angeles Dodgers – Originally the team was the Brooklyn Dodgers and were originally known as the Trolley Dodgers which Wikipedia says was “a reference to Brooklyn pedestrians who “dodged” the trollies that ran over the maze of streetcar lines that criss-crossed Brooklyn.” So locally specific but still pretty dumb for a baseball team, but made completely worthless when the team moved to LA where they don’t have trolleys and are just known as the Dodgers which suggest that they typically dodge stuff. Since in baseball dodging anything except a wild pitch will usually result in an out or an error, it’s a dumb name for a dumb team. And yes, I did find glee in putting them here because I am a Giants fan.
• San Diego Padres – Perhaps locally specific for the number of Spanish missionaries who historically populated the area, this takes the Anaheim Angels concept to a whole new level of ridiculousness and is in no way a fitting baseball team name.

I think the end result is that baseball has a lot more really bad names than football.

The Sharks game last night was a lot of fun; the seats were row nine of the upper deck just above and behind what ended up being the home ice goal. The great thing about the Shark Tank is that there really are no bad seats in the whole place and we had a nice view of the far side of the ice as well as some really great visuals of the near goal.

Of course the enjoyment of the game was helped by a 2-0 Sharks victory in which Nabokov looked as solid as I’ve seen him play in about three years. This was Nabby of old and near the end of the game the crowd was in a fever pitch chanting “Nab-by! Nab-by!” to spur him on to complete the shutout. He had some help from some solid defensive play including some nice physical work by HB‘s favorite whipping boy, Kyle McLaren.

I was also impressed to see the same play that Cheechoo and Bell scored on in the season opener work again for the Sharks second goal, it’s good to see that even when Cheech isn’t really finding the net that well he can still help out with some setups. It’s kind of surprising where all the points are coming from this year: The Sharks have one of the highest Goals For totals in the whole Western Conference (I think they’re actually tied for first with—of all people—Chicago) but Joe Thornton hasn’t scored one, Patrick Marleau has been pretty quiet on the scoring front and aside from that one freaky game where he nailed a natural Hat Trick, even Cheechoo hasn’t had any goals. Instead they’re coming from guys like Mihalek and… the defense.

Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t complaining. The Sharks are going to need contributions from everyone this year if they expect to be legitimate Cup contenders, and it’s nice to see that they aren’t having to rely on their top two lines to do all the offensive work. I just hope they keep it up; one thing that has stunted some good Sharks teams in the past has been the fact that whenever their top scorers go on the schnide for a while there has usually been no one around to pick up the slack. It looks like that might not be so much of a problem this year.

The one thing that has me a bit worried is this whole goaltender controversy. The problem as far as I’m concerned is that right now they’re both playing well and feeding off of each other to compete for the top spot. But the danger is that if it goes on too long they might both come to the conclusion that there is no top spot to attain and they’ll sort of give up trying as hard and figure, “We’re splitting the duty so I only really need to work half as hard.” Then you end up with two mediocre/underperforming goaltenders that you can’t deal anywhere. So the ideal would be to trade one of them as soon as possible.

So which one? That’s really tough in my mind because some people (I’m not saying me, I’m just saying some people) might argue that the last time this situation came up, the Sharks made the wrong move by sticking with Nabokov and dealing Kiprusoff. So do you fear making that same choice again and stick with Toskala even though you just signed Nabby to a pretty big contract extention last year or do you stick with your only Rookie of the Year and popular hometown netminder? How much weight do you apply to performance last year? Granted, Nabby was hurt and playing through injury a lot last year but it was really Toskala that got them as far as they did in the playoffs. What about performance this year? So far Toskala is unbeaten but Nabokov has two shutouts and his one loss was in a really wild, flukey kind of game.

My personal opinion is hard to sort out because I think I desperately want Nabokov to be the guy, but I worry because he’s had a lot of chances to be that guy and he’s dropped the ball more than he’s stepped up. I’ve never really been sold on Toskala’s panicky playing style and I can’t shake the feeling that he only plays as good as he does when he has something to prove. I worry that with Nabokov out of the picture as the number one guy, Toskala would flounder lacking the proper motivation. The Sharks have a great goalie system and the third stringer/future backup Nolan Schaefer looked really solid in very minimal play last year but I think if you held a gun to my head I would say I’d rather have him backing Nabby than Vesa.

Truthfully, I kind of want to keep them both but I understand that generally speaking that’s pretty pointless in the long run. So the real question becomes: What can we get for whomever we get rid of? I’m thinking if Raycroft sucks in Toronto (which he probably will), what about Bryan McCabe? He’s older but wouldn’t have to play as much in San Jose as he does in Toronto since the rest of the team is so young. Of course I would absolutely love to steal Dion Phaneuf from the Flames but I doubt they’d have a need for Toskala unless Kiprusoff got very badly hurt and I’m sure they’re fine with Jamie McLennan as a backup (not that Toskala would be too hip on going from one second-string spot to another, he’s going to want a #1 job). Plus I’m not sure I’d be too thrilled with handing one of our goaltenders off to a division rival again which is why I’m looking to the East.

Ideally Denis in Tampa Bay won’t work out and the Lightning will start shopping for someone to help save their fanbase and be willing to deal playoff-hero-turned-last-season-goat St. Louis whom I think is struggling less with his play and more with his club and would fit in nicely on the Sharks roster. Still, I think St. Louis probably still has too much name recognition in Tampa to be a realistic option (and I’m sure no one is going to repeat the debacle of the Thornton trade by giving up a franchise player to San Jose) but Fedotenko is pretty good and might be a nice replacement for Steve Bernier whom I like but I feel like should be playing more with Smith and Grier on a grinder line than the talented second line as a finesse guy. In any case the Sharks problem really isn’t offense but defense and Tampa Bay is pretty light in that category. My ideal trade would be to the Flyers who are struggling with a goalie controversy of their own, only theirs is between two mediocre players in Esche and Niittymaki. In return for Toskala we’d get Joni Pitkanen and Jeff Carter.