Copyright Or Doing What's Right

Oh, the NHL Vancouver Canucks, when will you ever learn? I'm certainly not going to take the Aquilinis to task over the latest PR fiasco because the Canucks' ownership NHL legacy from Medicor to the Griffiths to Orca Bay has been pretty consistent in never seeming to get it right.

The latest, though, in case you haven't heard concerns a local kids' lacrosse team's simply awesome uniform and logo redesign as follows:

You've lacrossed a line there, kids

The initial story is here, but let's start at the start.

The Canucks in this off-season bought the National Lacrosse League's Vancouver Stealth (see V logo on that kids' jersey). Previously, there was nothing "Vancouver" about the Stealth as they played all their home games in a suburb (or exurb really given how far this Stealth home "city" is from downtown Vancouver) of Langley. Now, hopefully, how Calgary with its NHL Flames and NLL Roughnecks, Denver, Colorado, with its Avalanche and Mammoth (plus NBA Nuggets and MLS Rapids shows us owner Stan Kroenke pretty much has cornered the Denver pro sports market) and Buffalo with its Sabres and Bandits joint franchise ownership connections are, the NLL team here can maybe start drawing more than flies.

A Stealth Suburb Hides A Team Well

The NLL team out there in Langley played in a tiny 5,276 capacity arena located not only in this exurb but nowhere near any form of good transit (quickest is a 30-ish-minute bus ride from Surrey Central Station which equals a journey from downtown Vancouver of basically an hour and 20 minutes if you make perfect connections along the way) really making it pretty much a non-starter for most lacrosse fans (of which there are a a few much closer to the city given the fairly long history of the Western Lacrosse Association teams, the Adanacs [yes, that's Canada spelled backwards] and Salmonbellies, based in the closer suburbs of respectively Coquitlam and New Westminster) unless they enjoy driving even more on our clogged roads.

The Stealth team also being terrible has not helped attendance with not only losing records in four of its five seasons out in Langley but being absolutely horrendous at 23W-65L (and that includes a 9W-9L lone playoff season in 2017) overall. The Vancouver Stealth have had all of one sellout in their entire Langley history--its opener in 2014. Their average attendance last season was 3,507 per game, and the best they've averaged is 3,758 per. Even in their playoff season, attendance dropped to 3,206 per.

Within the NLL the Stealth are easily the worst team on the floor and at the gate over the past five seasons. In contrast the aforementioned Mammoth and Bandits plus the Saskatchewan Rush all average over 14,000 pretty much every season and the Roughnecks in the 11,000+ range.

Three of these teams naturally play in NHL arenas given the ownership connections, and the team in Saskatoon plays in a 15,100 capacity venue which is also the Western Hockey League's junior team the Saskatoon Blades' home arena.

So the Canucks out of the goodness of their hearts . . . deep pockets, decided to help . . . uh, see dollar signs in pro lacrosse given their Avalanche, Flames and Sabres brethren's NLL ties.

That's most likely why the furor over a kids' lacrosse uniform starts as the Canucks did announce plans on revamping the Stealth's logo and uniform for their upcoming first season in 2019 at Rogers Arena.

Squiring In A Logo

Where is gets super interesting is local Global TV sports anchor,  Squire (Satellite Debris) Barnes tweeted out this after the Canucks' purchase of the Stealth:

With that first shot fired off the logo bow a seed was obviously planted in the brain of one parent (the mysterious Rob in the media stories) of these lacrosse kids and voila, let the copyright controversy began.

The funny thing is the Johnny Canuck alternative logo is a homage to start with from the original pro Western Hockey League Canucks that existed prior to the NHL swooping in in 1970. Here's the before and after:

Canuckle Up, Boys, Johnny's Coming

Like the NHL Canucks, the WHL Canucks never really used the Johnny Canuck on their jersey a whole lot but did go a bit whole hog with Johnny as the primary logo at least in their final 1969/70 WHL season. The Canucks abandoned Johnny once they joined the NHL for the scintillating stick in rink...that was apparently supposed to be a letter C if you squinted hard enough and took enough drugs in the '70s.

Yet another Rob[erto], this time one named Luongo (via sensational goalie mask designer Marlene Ross) is part of this return of Johnny Canuck as his mask in 2007 was the first to feature Johnny Canuck in any shape or form on the NHL team's gear.

Luongo also had a Team Canada 2010 Johnny Canuck mask and went total Johnny Canuck skating away later on in his career here.

From 2010 Solid Gold To 2011 "Silver"

So like all hockey team controversies, it's never the ownership, hockey/lacrosse fans like Lacrosse Parent Rob or even little kids, it's always the goalie's fault.