The writer -- his name is Darren, if that matters to you -- felt that I was being too harsh on the Trashers. Part of that was a misunderstanding about the scoring which was soon worked out. The other was that he felt Danbury deserved credit for trying something truly different. After all, they could have done a boring logo that looked like any other (although he didn't get explicit, I can easily imagine a logo of a man dressed up as a garbageman but with skates, glove, and stick, hitting a puck while a garbage truck looms in the background). But rather than go that route, they went with the absolutely boffo approach of making an actual trash can play hockey. As he said, "Surely this is worth something."

I could play the smartass here and say, "Yes, to be precise it was worth 99 points." But the truth of the matter is that there really is something to be said for daring to be different. All the truly great artists -- whether you're discussing painters like Pablo Picasso, composers like Ludwig von Beethoven, comedians like George Carlin or even television writers like Ernie Kovacs -- were great in part because they dared to knock their audiences out of their comfort zone. Admittedly, for every person who achieves greatness by standing out, there are a dozen who achieve sheer awfulness by standing out. But that's still a better track record than for those who slavishly follow others and don't take a single step in the direction of originality. Like Wayne Gretzky once said, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

I mention this because the Pensacola Ice Pilots are a perfect example of a team whose logo is a slavish imitation. Remember what I said recently in the Binghamton Senators page about "Let's take a cartoony hockey player and replace his helmet with something representative of the team name"? Well, what is this logo?

Not only am I tired of looking at these things, I'm also tired of writing about them. Honestly, what can I say about this logo that I haven't already said Binghamton, or San Angelo, or half a dozen other teams? There's only one interesting thing here, and that's the wave. Okay, "pilot" can be a nautical reference as well as an aeronautical, but clearly this guy is a plane pilot, not a boat pilot. But there's a wave about waist high on him. Did he crash land in the Gulf of Mexico? Actually, now that I think about it, it wouldn't be any better if he was a boat pilot. Pilots aren't supposed to be in the water. They're supposed to be on the boat. There's no boat here.

Then we've got the eyebrows. I've seen guys with prominent eyebrows before, but I've never witnessed anything like this. As far as I can tell, his eyebrows and strong enough and agile enough to actually hold his goggles in place. I've never heard of anything like it. Usually, the only time you hear of any part of the face possessing capabilities on a par with this is when you're listening to a bawdy song and it's describing a man's tongue.

One last question: Is that supposed to be red hair or a red scarf flying behind him? If it's his hair, then it's almost as impressively bizarre as the eyrbrows. And if it's a scarf, he needs to get a new one before that one frays into oblivion.

Final Score: 88 points.
Penalties: Ice, 9 pts; Compound, 13 pts; Alliteration, 2 pts; Cartoon, 17 pts; Name-Logo, 2 pts; Equip-Logo (quadruply-egregious), 25 pts; Colorful, 13 pts; Yucky-Logo, 5 pts; Yucky-Name, 5 pts.
Bonuses: Local, -3 pts.