Dan McCarthy wrote in explaining that I need to give a Local Bonus to the Bridgeport Sound Tigers. The "Tigers" name, he explains, comes from the fact that P.T. Barnum is from Bridgeport. I checked and it looks like this is correct (the P.T. Barnum Museum is in Bridgeport, I know that much), so it looks like Dan is right. I have updated the score.

Reader Michael Harrison disagreed somewhat with my review of the Flint Generals. He points out that the logo they currently use is a return to the original logo used by the IHL Flint Generals in 1969, and that the name "Generals" comes from the presence of a General Motors plant in town. He also argues that the wheel is relevant since it refers to the city, even if it doesn't directly refer to "Generals" in any way.

I had suspected for a while that this was the source of the Generals name, and am glad to have confirmation. It's almost enough to justify giving them the "Local" bonus.

But I must respectfully disagree that this justifies putting a wheel in the logo. Simply put, I'm not very willing to accept the idea of city references in the logo. I'm certainly not willing to accept the idea of a city reference being the most prominent feature of the logo, as it is in Flint's case. Had there been a military reference of some sort that also incorporated a subtle reference to car manufacturing (a tank comes to mind as a possible approach, or maybe a jeep), I'd probably buy that. I don't buy a big, ugly "G" with a wheel and a hockey stick and nothing else.

Another e-mail comes from Michael McDowell, who says that the swooshy thing in the Idaho Steelheads logo is actually a fish. I looked at this for several minutes, and concluded that you might indeed see a fish if you drop some acid and then squint just right. Other than that, I just don't know.

Finally, a couple of people have asked me in recent weeks what I thought of the recently-defunct Columbus Stars' logo. I don't normally take requests (there is, believe it or not, a set order that I'm going in), and I'm certainly not going to do a full review of a team that no longer exists, but I will briefly state my opinion.

Believe it or not, I kind of liked the Columbus Stars' logo. I know that's going to disappoint some of the people who wrote (one of them clearly wanted to hear me crack on the logo), but in all honestly I thought it had a few things going for it. I liked the retro bicentennial feel (having been a child living in Washington DC in 1976 may be partly responsible for that), I liked the way the dominant feature of the logo was formed out of the negative space of other elements, and I absolutely loved the absolute lack of cartoon characters or hockey equipment. Its score, truth be told, would probably have been in the single digits.

Reader Kelly Levy makes the following comment: "I will disagree with you on one point, the most disturbing thing about the Roanoke Express original logo was the fact that the train, which is halfway to swallowing a huge puck, is cycloptic."

Kelly has a good point. We could argue until the cows come home over whether the cycloptic eye or the puck-eating teeth is more disturbing than the other. But the important thing, I think, is that we agree that we would not want to board a train that had either. I'm not sure how I missed that with the original logo, but thanks to Kelly for pointing it out.

Kelly also asked if I have plans to go back and do the logos of defunct teams, saying "I'd love to hear your thoughts on the Beast of New Haven (Yalies just had to be different, didn't they?) and my beloved Richmond Renegades who for 13 years had their logo redesigned over and over and kept finding ways to make it worse and worse." The answer, I'm afraid, is probably not. Given the fact that I average about one logo a week and don't do much during the offseason, it's probably going to take me two more years just to get the current teams done. I'm not sure what, if anything, I'm going to do after that. I'm toying with the idea of doing NHL and/or major junior teams, but no guarantees. Another thought I've considered is minor league baseball, but most of its cliches tend to be traditional, not trendy, so it's not quite the fertile ground that minor league hockey is. In any case, it's unlikely I'll return to the logos of defunct teams except in cases where they relate to current teams' logos.

That being said, I agree 100% that the Beast of New Haven and Richmond Renegades had truly awful logos.