The gritty mascot of your nightmares
It’s been 42 years since the Philadelphia Flyers had a mascot. It was a good run.
That ended this week when the team’s brain trust, in apparent consultation with Pennywise and Chucky, unveiled Gritty, a slack-jawed, googlyeyed, orange-bearded, sevenfoot abomination that looks like it keeps human organs in mason jars, in a lair that smells like Claude Giroux’s jockstrap after an overtime loss.
A good mascot brings a sense of fun. Gritty brings a sense of imminent doom.
It’s a mystery, really. NHL mascots are cuddly ambassadors designed to engage young fans. That’s it. That’s why Toronto’s Carlton the Bear is as threatening as a Care Bear. It’s why Carolina’s Stormy is a grinning pig with disarming blue eyes.
To skim the names of other NHL mascots — Mick E. Moose, Harvey the Hound, SJ Sharkie, Tommy Hawk, Thunderbug, Bernie the St. Bernard, Youppi! — is to rest assured that none will ever waddle up to your seats during the first intermission and scare the living daylights out of your kids.
Not so with Gritty, the scariest-looking Flyer since Dave “The Hammer” Schultz patrolled the left wing in the early ’70s with his menacing ’stache and fists of fury. Gritty is what happens when a possibly stoned costume designer is inspired by both The Babadook and Fraggle Rock. Gritty is Gossamer from Looney Tunes as spliced with Harry and The Hendersons in a petri dish laced with Scott Hartnell’s DNA.
Gritty is a mascot failure. Gritty is now the second most terrifying creature in the NHL, behind only commish Gary Bettman, whose jerky, hand-puppet movements and Kermit the Frog modulation is the stuff of nightmares.
So the question becomes: who thought this was a good idea?
Did the Flyers even bother with any test marketing? Did anyone slip a draft sketch under the door of general manager Ron Hextall who, come to think of it, was an ankle-slashing maniac when he played goal for the Flyers? Was the only focus group made up of Freddy Krueger and Animal from The Muppets who, respectively, were asked, “Should we give Gritty blades for fingers?” and “Does Gritty seem unhinged enough to bang bongos with Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem band?”
Also: “Will the children sob and wet their beds?”
It’s almost as if the Flyers studied mascots from other sporting realms and then set out to be No. 1 in the Department of Creepy: “Guys, have you seen King Cake Baby from the New Orleans Pelicans? How about Wenlock & Mandeville from the 2012 Summer Olympics? We could create something way more disturbing.”
Yes. Great idea. And instead of encouraging Gritty to bop around and pump his gloved fists after the Flyers score this season, maybe he can put a random tot in a headlock while whispering, “I watch you when you sleep.”
What’s really strange about Gritty is how the Flyers are trying to conjure team lore in a sport that is now night and day from when they were feared as the Broad Street Bullies. Those Flyers teams, circa Bobby Clarke and Bill Barber, could beat you on the scoreboard while also beating you senseless.
Sticks? Those guys might as well have been skating around with tridents. On any night, the red flashes came from two sources — the goal light and blood on the ice.
But in this kinder, gentler NHL, in which bench-clearing brawls are increasingly a fuzzy memory, Gritty is an anachronism. Trying to shape a toughguy origin story — “His father was a bully,” are the first five words in Gritty’s official bio — for a hockey mascot is about as sensible as inventing a cereal mascot named Captain Salmonella.
Then to top off the lunacy, the Flyers bumbled forth with a sidekick that violates all cuddly norms. It’s as if they outsourced this mascot project to practical jokers.
No wonder the crosstown rival Pittsburgh Penguins, while retweeting the Gritty arrival notice this week, simply tacked on a withering, “lol ok.”
With his swirling eyes and clapping style of a serial killer, how on earth is Gritty going to visit sick kids in hospitals and not add panic attacks to their conditions? If Gritty pointed a T-shirt gun at my daughters, they’d burst into tears and then, 30 years from now, tell a therapist about how their trust was shattered on that one horrifying night in Philly: “I can still see that orange Yeti trudging closer and closer as my father chuckled and did nothing. And then, bang!”
A good mascot enlivens a hockey game without becoming an unnerving distraction. A good mascot makes the kids in the stands want to inch closer, not scream and run away. A good mascot does not generate Instagram comments from a team’s own fan base on Day 1 that includes “you’re a sick joke of a mascot,” “wow that’s terrifying,” “wack,” “this is so disappointing,” “cookie monster on crack and heroin,” “you trash” and “inbred orange Grimace.”
Gritty is not a good mascot.