Perhaps all of it would have turned out otherwise if the Islanders had won a playoff series. Perhaps all it will have taken was just attending to the playoffs. Perhaps it was all all the way down to the disastrous record and pair of last-place finishes over the 2 seasons the Islanders used the infamous Fisherman as their primary logo.
Definitely the losing had not less than something to do with the backlash back then.
“One among the truisms in sports is that you need to rebrand once you expect that you just’re gonna go in a winning direction,” Nick Hirshon, a journalism professor at William Patterson University and writer of “We Want Fish Sticks,” a book that chronicles the failed rebranding, said in a phone call with Sports+.
The Islanders rebranded off a 15-28-5 lockout-shortened season in 1994-95. That was already one box they failed to ascertain. The remaining would come soon enough.
That is a component of the rationale why it is likely to be surprising to anyone around between 1995 and 1997 that the Islanders have wholeheartedly embraced the Fisherman as their reverse retro look this season. When the NHL first introduced the retro concept in 2020, the Islanders steadfastly avoided it, as an alternative going with a navy blue sweater that was mainly similar to their regular jersey.
This time, they took the plunge, and the excitement was immediate. The sweaters quickly became ubiquitous across the UBS Arena concourse. The Isles are a corporation based just outside of one in every of the league’s biggest media markets, but one which struggles to get attention. This got attention.
Players hailed it. So did the marketing team.
“I just like the throwback stuff,” Zach Parise said in October. “I like the several looks, the several colours. Not the change, but only for a distinct look. It’s all the time neat for the fans.”
Why, though, has there been such a change in attitude about this logo, once related to the dark days of the franchise?
“When the Islanders first unveiled the Fisherman logo in 1995, there have been plenty of mistakes made,” Hirshon said. “There wasn’t loads of research done, there have been no focus groups or interviews with fans to find out whether or not they desired to part from the unique logo. They didn’t have a very good ambassador for the rebrand. In many of the ads on the time, that they had either [general manager] Mike Milbury or [owner] John Spano, who turned out to be a con artist and had to present up the team. They usually really didn’t focus as much on the team, like Ziggy Palffy, who was incredibly popular and still is with the fan base.
“I believe one in every of the explanations is with the passage of time, loads of the younger fans who don’t remember the Fisherman logo from its first run in 1995-1997, they only view this as a cool retro design and so they don’t associate it with the losing of the Nineteen Nineties or any of the opposite negative media attention that it received: ‘We Want Fish Sticks’ chants and all that.”
Hirshon points to how the Kings rebranded after trading for Wayne Gretzky in 1988 as what a successful effort looked like. Gretzky arrived at his introductory press conference wearing silver and black, recent colours for a franchise that previously had draped itself in the identical purple and gold as their co-tenants on the Los Angeles Forum.
With Gretzky, the Kings — who had made the playoffs within the two previous seasons before acquiring No. 99 — became perennial contenders, making it so far as the Stanley Cup Final in 1993. Silver and black are still the first colours of their logo set.
“Individuals are more receptive to something like that since the team is doing good, so ‘I suppose I’ll exit and buy the brand new jersey and I’ll associate it with all these positive memories,’” Hirshon said. “I believe it’s that, I believe it’s also remembering that changing a jersey or a logo is only one step in a more comprehensive rebranding.”
The Islanders, on the time, also introduced Nyisles as their recent mascot and included elements of their game presentation meant to emphasise the Fisherman brand — a foghorn because the goal horn and fog-like smoke emanating from the Nassau Coliseum scoreboard. With the team struggling, though, and Spano soon being chased out of ownership on account of fraud, that each one became a part of the running joke that was the franchise.
A wholesale rebranding effort wouldn’t be greeted happily now. But as a nod to the past and a jersey that they’re wearing six times this season — the ultimate two occasions are coming Saturday against the Hurricanes and Jan. 28 against Las Vegas — the Fisherman comes off as cool.
“[Fans] just see it as, “Hey, that is something that’s cool and old, it type of matches in with the nostalgic type of direction that loads of sports teams have been getting in the previous few years,’ especially with Nineteen Nineties designs,” Hirshon said. “For loads of people like myself, they grew up within the ’90s and now we’re getting nostalgic: ‘Yeah, keep in mind that?’ It’s now sufficiently old that we type of pine for it again.”
How has Pelech’s injury impacted matchups?
Adam Pelech continues to skate with the team in his recovery from a head injury, however it has been a bit over six weeks for the reason that star defenseman went down against the Blues following a success into the boards by Robert Bortuzzo.
Though the main focus recently has been on the Isles’ offensive struggles, losing Pelech on the back end has caused major issues. The 2022 All-Star forms a steadfast pair with Ryan Pulock that eats up the biggest bulk of minutes against opposing top lines when each are healthy. Without Pelech, Pulock has skated with whomever Pelech’s alternative has been on a given night — recently Parker Wotherspoon, though Dennis Cholowski drew in for Wotherspoon against the Bruins on Wednesday. That has been Lane Lambert’s way of protecting Wotherspoon, Cholowski or Robin Salo, all of whom have gotten a probability at that spot. However it means the Isles have needed to go along with one other pair — which has almost all the time been Scott Mayfield’s — against opposing top lines.
A pair things to be aware of here. First, the graphic dates back to Dec. 23, Wotherspoon’s debut. Second, we checked out which pair played essentially the most, but that doesn’t mean one pair played exclusively against one line. Third, keep in mind that on the road, the Islanders don’t have last change — and subsequently don’t have as much control of matchups.
The last two caveats apply specifically to the Calgary game, the just one we checked out during which Mayfield wasn’t involved as the first matchup against a top line. Aho and Mayfield played roughly five minutes against Nazem Kadri’s line that night and were on the ice for 2 goals against — Pulock and Wotherspoon just happened to be on for barely longer, with the previous being on for a goal against as well.
Still, there are some takeaways here, the most important being that Lambert still is sheltering Noah Dobson. Against Washington on Monday night, for instance, Dobson played just 3:22 total while Alex Ovechkin — Dylan Strome’s left wing — was on the ice. Mayfield and Romanov were on the ice for 11:54 and 10:04, respectively.
When Lambert and GM Lou Lamoriello discuss Dobson taking the subsequent steps defensively, they mean having the ability to trust him in spots like this. At once, he isn’t quite there yet. Neither is Aho, who was demoted off Mayfield’s left side following a series of poor performances out west.
So recently, the Isles have been left with Mayfield and Romanov as their de facto top pair, and the outcomes have been mixed. Minnesota’s top line of Kirill Kaprizov, Sam Steel and Mats Zuccarello had a robust night against them, as did the Capitals’ Ovechkin-Strome line. Mayfield and Romanov did hold their very own against a heavy Stars top line of Jason Robertson, Tyler Seguin and Joe Pavelski — Robertson scored, but during a rare shift against Wotherspoon and Pulock — in addition to against Montreal’s top line, centered by Nick Suzuki.
That alignment has the added disadvantages of splitting up Romanov and Dobson, a well-balanced pair that the Islanders have the desire to make work, and limiting Dobson’s five-on-five ice time, which was down 1:16 per game from last season going into Wednesday.
Still, it is likely to be the most effective solution they’ve straight away. Which only makes it all of the more imperative to get Pelech back and proper the order of things.
Five hits from Bruins 4, Islanders 1
1. William Dufour struggled in his debut, turning the puck over two separate times that led to goals. However the Islanders put their 20-year-old prospect able to fail. Asking him to make his NHL debut on the highest line against the Bruins after which nailing him to the bench after he struggled is a self-fulfilling prophecy, one which stinks of desperation.
2. Ditto for the recent deployment of Semyon Varlamov, who allowed 4 goals on 1.86 expected goals-against on Wednesday, per Natural Stat Trick. The NHL is a results league, and that’s on Varlamov, just as Dufour’s performance is on him. But not giving Varlamov a single game on the homestand until the last after which expecting him to beat the most effective team within the league — in just the second game he’s played in a month — does fallacious by the player.
3. When each penny of cap space matters, keeping Simon Holmstrom on the roster to be a healthy scratch as an alternative of sending him to AHL Bridgeport — even when just for the day — was one other head-scratcher.
4. Prior to any roster moves made Thursday, the Islanders had $3.36 million in cap space and were on pace to have $6.88 million by the March 3 trade deadline. Can they afford to attend that long to make a move? It’s becoming hard to see how.
5. For all of the well-deserved hand-wringing over the ability play, the Islanders had just five high-danger possibilities at five-on-five on Wednesday, per Natural Stat Trick. It was the fourth time of their last seven games they’ve been held to 5 or fewer high-danger possibilities, and through the five-game homestand, they scored a complete of eight goals.
Perhaps all of it would have turned out otherwise if the Islanders had won a playoff series. Perhaps all it will have taken was just attending to the playoffs. Perhaps it was all all the way down to the disastrous record and pair of last-place finishes over the 2 seasons the Islanders used the infamous Fisherman as their primary logo.
Definitely the losing had not less than something to do with the backlash back then.
“One among the truisms in sports is that you need to rebrand once you expect that you just’re gonna go in a winning direction,” Nick Hirshon, a journalism professor at William Patterson University and writer of “We Want Fish Sticks,” a book that chronicles the failed rebranding, said in a phone call with Sports+.
The Islanders rebranded off a 15-28-5 lockout-shortened season in 1994-95. That was already one box they failed to ascertain. The remaining would come soon enough.
That is a component of the rationale why it is likely to be surprising to anyone around between 1995 and 1997 that the Islanders have wholeheartedly embraced the Fisherman as their reverse retro look this season. When the NHL first introduced the retro concept in 2020, the Islanders steadfastly avoided it, as an alternative going with a navy blue sweater that was mainly similar to their regular jersey.
This time, they took the plunge, and the excitement was immediate. The sweaters quickly became ubiquitous across the UBS Arena concourse. The Isles are a corporation based just outside of one in every of the league’s biggest media markets, but one which struggles to get attention. This got attention.
Players hailed it. So did the marketing team.
“I just like the throwback stuff,” Zach Parise said in October. “I like the several looks, the several colours. Not the change, but only for a distinct look. It’s all the time neat for the fans.”
Why, though, has there been such a change in attitude about this logo, once related to the dark days of the franchise?
“When the Islanders first unveiled the Fisherman logo in 1995, there have been plenty of mistakes made,” Hirshon said. “There wasn’t loads of research done, there have been no focus groups or interviews with fans to find out whether or not they desired to part from the unique logo. They didn’t have a very good ambassador for the rebrand. In many of the ads on the time, that they had either [general manager] Mike Milbury or [owner] John Spano, who turned out to be a con artist and had to present up the team. They usually really didn’t focus as much on the team, like Ziggy Palffy, who was incredibly popular and still is with the fan base.
“I believe one in every of the explanations is with the passage of time, loads of the younger fans who don’t remember the Fisherman logo from its first run in 1995-1997, they only view this as a cool retro design and so they don’t associate it with the losing of the Nineteen Nineties or any of the opposite negative media attention that it received: ‘We Want Fish Sticks’ chants and all that.”
Hirshon points to how the Kings rebranded after trading for Wayne Gretzky in 1988 as what a successful effort looked like. Gretzky arrived at his introductory press conference wearing silver and black, recent colours for a franchise that previously had draped itself in the identical purple and gold as their co-tenants on the Los Angeles Forum.
With Gretzky, the Kings — who had made the playoffs within the two previous seasons before acquiring No. 99 — became perennial contenders, making it so far as the Stanley Cup Final in 1993. Silver and black are still the first colours of their logo set.
“Individuals are more receptive to something like that since the team is doing good, so ‘I suppose I’ll exit and buy the brand new jersey and I’ll associate it with all these positive memories,’” Hirshon said. “I believe it’s that, I believe it’s also remembering that changing a jersey or a logo is only one step in a more comprehensive rebranding.”
The Islanders, on the time, also introduced Nyisles as their recent mascot and included elements of their game presentation meant to emphasise the Fisherman brand — a foghorn because the goal horn and fog-like smoke emanating from the Nassau Coliseum scoreboard. With the team struggling, though, and Spano soon being chased out of ownership on account of fraud, that each one became a part of the running joke that was the franchise.
A wholesale rebranding effort wouldn’t be greeted happily now. But as a nod to the past and a jersey that they’re wearing six times this season — the ultimate two occasions are coming Saturday against the Hurricanes and Jan. 28 against Las Vegas — the Fisherman comes off as cool.
“[Fans] just see it as, “Hey, that is something that’s cool and old, it type of matches in with the nostalgic type of direction that loads of sports teams have been getting in the previous few years,’ especially with Nineteen Nineties designs,” Hirshon said. “For loads of people like myself, they grew up within the ’90s and now we’re getting nostalgic: ‘Yeah, keep in mind that?’ It’s now sufficiently old that we type of pine for it again.”
How has Pelech’s injury impacted matchups?
Adam Pelech continues to skate with the team in his recovery from a head injury, however it has been a bit over six weeks for the reason that star defenseman went down against the Blues following a success into the boards by Robert Bortuzzo.
Though the main focus recently has been on the Isles’ offensive struggles, losing Pelech on the back end has caused major issues. The 2022 All-Star forms a steadfast pair with Ryan Pulock that eats up the biggest bulk of minutes against opposing top lines when each are healthy. Without Pelech, Pulock has skated with whomever Pelech’s alternative has been on a given night — recently Parker Wotherspoon, though Dennis Cholowski drew in for Wotherspoon against the Bruins on Wednesday. That has been Lane Lambert’s way of protecting Wotherspoon, Cholowski or Robin Salo, all of whom have gotten a probability at that spot. However it means the Isles have needed to go along with one other pair — which has almost all the time been Scott Mayfield’s — against opposing top lines.
A pair things to be aware of here. First, the graphic dates back to Dec. 23, Wotherspoon’s debut. Second, we checked out which pair played essentially the most, but that doesn’t mean one pair played exclusively against one line. Third, keep in mind that on the road, the Islanders don’t have last change — and subsequently don’t have as much control of matchups.
The last two caveats apply specifically to the Calgary game, the just one we checked out during which Mayfield wasn’t involved as the first matchup against a top line. Aho and Mayfield played roughly five minutes against Nazem Kadri’s line that night and were on the ice for 2 goals against — Pulock and Wotherspoon just happened to be on for barely longer, with the previous being on for a goal against as well.
Still, there are some takeaways here, the most important being that Lambert still is sheltering Noah Dobson. Against Washington on Monday night, for instance, Dobson played just 3:22 total while Alex Ovechkin — Dylan Strome’s left wing — was on the ice. Mayfield and Romanov were on the ice for 11:54 and 10:04, respectively.
When Lambert and GM Lou Lamoriello discuss Dobson taking the subsequent steps defensively, they mean having the ability to trust him in spots like this. At once, he isn’t quite there yet. Neither is Aho, who was demoted off Mayfield’s left side following a series of poor performances out west.
So recently, the Isles have been left with Mayfield and Romanov as their de facto top pair, and the outcomes have been mixed. Minnesota’s top line of Kirill Kaprizov, Sam Steel and Mats Zuccarello had a robust night against them, as did the Capitals’ Ovechkin-Strome line. Mayfield and Romanov did hold their very own against a heavy Stars top line of Jason Robertson, Tyler Seguin and Joe Pavelski — Robertson scored, but during a rare shift against Wotherspoon and Pulock — in addition to against Montreal’s top line, centered by Nick Suzuki.
That alignment has the added disadvantages of splitting up Romanov and Dobson, a well-balanced pair that the Islanders have the desire to make work, and limiting Dobson’s five-on-five ice time, which was down 1:16 per game from last season going into Wednesday.
Still, it is likely to be the most effective solution they’ve straight away. Which only makes it all of the more imperative to get Pelech back and proper the order of things.
Five hits from Bruins 4, Islanders 1
1. William Dufour struggled in his debut, turning the puck over two separate times that led to goals. However the Islanders put their 20-year-old prospect able to fail. Asking him to make his NHL debut on the highest line against the Bruins after which nailing him to the bench after he struggled is a self-fulfilling prophecy, one which stinks of desperation.
2. Ditto for the recent deployment of Semyon Varlamov, who allowed 4 goals on 1.86 expected goals-against on Wednesday, per Natural Stat Trick. The NHL is a results league, and that’s on Varlamov, just as Dufour’s performance is on him. But not giving Varlamov a single game on the homestand until the last after which expecting him to beat the most effective team within the league — in just the second game he’s played in a month — does fallacious by the player.
3. When each penny of cap space matters, keeping Simon Holmstrom on the roster to be a healthy scratch as an alternative of sending him to AHL Bridgeport — even when just for the day — was one other head-scratcher.
4. Prior to any roster moves made Thursday, the Islanders had $3.36 million in cap space and were on pace to have $6.88 million by the March 3 trade deadline. Can they afford to attend that long to make a move? It’s becoming hard to see how.
5. For all of the well-deserved hand-wringing over the ability play, the Islanders had just five high-danger possibilities at five-on-five on Wednesday, per Natural Stat Trick. It was the fourth time of their last seven games they’ve been held to 5 or fewer high-danger possibilities, and through the five-game homestand, they scored a complete of eight goals.
