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	Bridgeport Sound Tigers	17
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Posted 2004 February 12
Updated 2005 September 25

"Sound" is one of the more flexible words in the English language. It has several definitions which are, for the most part, completely unrelated -- to make a noise, the noise being made, a body of water, healthy, and probably one or two others I could find if I felt like travelling the ten feet or so between me and the nearest dictionary.

You can make all sort of neat mental images by trying to figure out which meaning the owners of Bridgeport's hockey team intended when they came up with the name "Sound Tigers". My personal favorite is the image of a tiger drowning in the water as it frantically and unsuccessfully tries to swim.

Interestingly, this is the meaning of the word "sound" that they actually had in mind.

I suppose that on some level, I should actually give some credit to this absolutely terrible name. Most of the really bad compound names are either "Ice" something or something "Kings". The Bridgeport Sound Tigers do at least avoid these two pitfalls. But that does nothing to change the fact that it is an extremely stupid name.

What really kills me about this is that there's no real need for the "Sound" in this team name. "Tigers" by itself would be a good name -- one of the classics, and (oddly enough) one not being used by a professional hockey team anywhere in North America. They could have a nice, classic name, and find a nice classic logo to go with it.

Instead, we get a blue cat.

If the tiger in this logo were actually orange, it would probably be a fairly neat logo. Not anything to write home about, but decent, at least. But this looks stupid. The little drops of water don't help any. In fact, combined with the fact that all you can see is the tiger's head, it gives the impression that -- yes, you guessed it -- he's drowning.

Funny, when I pictured that image there was a lot more flailing of the arms involved.

UPDATE: Per an e-mail from Dan McCarthy, I am revising Bridgeport's score by giving them the "Local" bonus because the "Tigers" part of their name comes from the fact that Bridgeport was P.T. Barnum's home.

Final Score: 17 points.
Penalties: Compound, 13 pts; Name-Logo, 2 pts; Yucky-Name, 5 pts
Bonuses: Local, -3 pts.