Thoughts on Expansion Teams

[solas 1,947]

So it's almost 11 PM as I'm starting this, and I just realized I needed to write a Fan 590 (or VHL.com article, whatever you want to call it) for the theme week.  So I'm not going to be writing anything too significant here, just my own thoughts on expansion teams as someone who just recently returned.  It's honestly pretty exciting to see expansion happening after being around for the original expansion in S30, then the later contraction (RIP Vasteras/Stockholm).  It's nice to see the league expanding again - I assume there's been a decent amount of growth since I was last properly active in order for this to happen.  I don't have too many thoughts on the relocating teams - it seems to make sense to make the VHLM all-North American considering Oslo was the only non-NA team left (RIP Oslo Screaming Seamen/Naggerwolves), and while I prefer Quebec to Vancouver as a location (Vancouver is too close to Seattle IMO), it doesn't really change that much for me.  I'm still probably going to call them the Meute in my head for a while due to habit.  So now here are my thoughts on the expansion teams.  Keep in mind that I'm pretty picky with logos/team names so I suspect my opinions are a bit more harsh than a lot of other people's.

 

Philadelphia Reapers - Philadelphia is a good place for a team, particularly a VHLM team.  Reapers is a name I could give or take though, and the logo is kinda meh.  I feel like the representation of the Grim Reaper could be a bit clearer, maybe?  And the shading could probably be simplified a bit, I'd prefer if there was only 1 shade of teal and 1 shade of red.

 

Houston Bulls - Name and location are perfect.  Houston is one of the biggest cities in the US, so even if it's not necessarily a traditional hockey market it still fits perfectly for the VHLM.  Bulls is a great team name too.  I dislike the logo though.  Something about the representation of the bull just looks...off to me.  I think it just looks like the snout isn't really protruding from the bull's face or something, so it just looks weird.

 

Moscow Menace - Fantastic logo, really cool looking.  I have some slight nitpicks with the shading but that's very small stuff.  In general, a good choice of color scheme as we needed a team wearing green now that Cologne is gone (Green is an incredibly underused color in sports).  Moscow is comfortably the best choice for team location if Vasteras isn't coming back (), as it's pretty much been agreed upon for a while that we needed a Russian team.  Menace is kind of a meh name to me, but it's good enough and it makes for an alliteration with Moscow.  Additionally, a great GM choice in Victor.  Both of the VHLM GMs seem to have joined after I went inactive, so I can't really comment on them, but I can say that Victor is a good choice for an expansion GM, as you'll need someone with experience to build up a new team.

 

Oh wow I just wrote over 500 words.  How the hell did that happen?

[Beketov 8,958]

5 hours ago, solas said:

In general, a good choice of color scheme as we needed a team wearing green now that Cologne is gone

You might need your monitor calibrated because that logo is definite gold, not green.