The Ice Goof Den: CWHL and NWHL Mascots

The Ice Garden’s social media squad proposed a thought-provoking question on Twitter on Jan. 29: if you could pick a mascot for any women’s team and name it, what would it be and what would it be named?

Okay tweeps. Do we still say tweeps? Anyway, if you could pick a mascot for any women's team (college, pro, etc.) and name it, what would it be and what would it be named? Use our brand spankin' new hashtag: #TIGTalk

— The Ice Garden (@TheIceGarden) January 29, 2019

Because I was tired of spam-responding to that original tweet, I’ve decided to present the shenanigans of my mind to the public without being constrained by the preposterous confines of 280 characters.

Without further adieu, here are six potential professional women’s hockey mascots — three for the NWHL and three for the CWHL.

The Queen | the Boston Pride

The Queen is a battle-hardened lioness covered in scars with a cleft in her left ear. She’s strong and silent, a true matriarch of the wild. Unlike other mascots, she will never dance and she won’t wear a jersey. And that’s because she means business. And because she’s an apex predator. We’ll just have to make sure there’s no dried blood and gore around her maw before games.

The Queen will drop t-shirts into the laps of young fans attending Pride games with the same careful strength that lionesses display when moving their cubs in the wild. She will also protect her pride by mauling fans wearing the swag of opposing teams during stoppages of play. When she pounces on supporters of the visiting team, red streamers and silly string will fire from the corners of her mouth.

I guess we’ll just make them sign a waiver or something.

R0se | the Metropolitan Riveters

Naturally, the inspiration for the Riveters’ mascot is the iconic Rosie the Riveter — but with a twist!

R0se is a tough female robot wearing a red bandanna and overalls covered in pins. Think female Bender from Futurama, but less into crushing beer cans and more into handing out model planes to kids at intermission. R0se will be known for flexing her gleaming steel muscles and shoot sparks from her mouth when the Riveters score goals. Y’know, just the standard stuff.

In case the sparks get boring (when have sparks ever been boring?), R0se frequently fires a t-shirt cannon into the crowd that is mocked up to look like a rivet gun. At each Riveters’ home game, she’ll be seen handing out limited edition hockey-themed pins to young Riveters fans. Naturally, she will also wave a red bandanna and sparklers around to rally the team during stoppages. Because sparks are awesome and so are bandannas.

Sunny | Buffalo Beauts

There are a lot of mascots in sports who are American bison (or buffalo), but few have the attitude and presence of Sunny. The Beauts’ mascot proudly wears a silver crown as an ambassador of the Queen City and a necklace made from Buffalo nickels.

Sunny can detach her left horn so she can hold it up to her mouth and trumpet out the start of a “Let’s go Buffalo” chant. She can also detach her right horn and drink grown-up giggle juice from it if things are going poorly.

Sunny’s defining gimmick is pressing her face up against the glass near officials during stoppages. She can discharge compressed air from her nostrils in a powerful snort to send a message. She’ll also do this to fans of visiting teams and, in general, to anyone she wants to. It’s unwise to tell an anthropomorphic buffalo what to do.

Star | Les Canadiennes de Montréal

Star is a hardy, crafty pioneer doggo, fresh from the Canadian wilderness. She’s covered in the furs she’s gathered from trapping — which are actually stuffed animal pelts to keep things kid-friendly because apparently mascots are for kids — and inspires Montréal fans to put the rest of the world to shame in Teddy Bear tosses.

Star has an old-timey musket that billows out a small cloud of red smoke whenever Montréal scores a goal. She’s also bilingual and is something of a trickster.

Star sets whoopee cushion traps down on the seats of fans who support the visiting team when they leave their seats. She can also be spotted attempting to fish for players on the opposing team who are serving time in the penalty box.

Blaze | Calgary Inferno

Blaze is a fire elemental covered in color-changing red/orange/yellow sequins who wears a gray, expressionless mask. Y’know, kinda like the one in the Inferno’s badass logo. She also sports firefighting gear and wears a visibly singed Inferno jersey that is scorched around its edges — because she’s badass.

Blaze has long red and black hair with a prominent purple streak. She regularly plays with flash paper like an amateur magician. Blaze also carries around an over-sized fire ax which she dances around with and may or may not shoot flames from when Calgary scores goals, depending on what the fire code in Alberta looks like.

Roller | Markham Thunder

Roller is unlike any mascot in the known sporting world.

The Thunder’s mascot is a randomly selected fan who enters a Zorb that is painted to look like an ominous grey and green storm cloud. That fan will roll around the rink, building up momentum, until they suddenly slam behind the glass of the opposition’s goaltender. Just when this is about to happen, Markham’s fans stomp and thunder their feet and go buck wild when the collision happens. It’s pretty great.

As is tradition, at several points during the game Roller makes their way towards the stands so that zealous Markham fans can form a circle around the sacred Zorb and drum on it with Thundersticks. Naturally, this works the crowd into a frenzy. Also, as is tradition, each game’s honorary Roller will be given custom Markham Thunder green ear plugs. I forgot to mention that before.

Roller is no one and everyone. We all roll. We all Thunder.