The Islanders also introduced a new mascot. One dismayed supporter hoisted a banner at the Coliseum reading, “Fish sticks are for dinner, not our logo.” The new logo (right) was compared to the Gorton’s Fisherman (left). The new jerseys debuted in the 1995-96 season, and fans and detractors alike immediately noticed the resemblance to the frozen-food icon. “If you would have thrown that image out to a group of kindergartners, they would have said this is the Gorton’s fisherman,” Hirshon says. The team rushed to unveil the new look to the public, but failed to do any focus-group research. The team’s ownership liked the idea of incorporating the island’s seafaring heritage into the team’s identity and saw the Joel song and its video, featuring weathered boatmen, as a direction to follow.Ī designer eventually created an image of an older, bearded man in a rain slicker and oilskin hat holding a hockey stick. The Long Islander in 1990 had released the song “The Downeaster ‘Alexa,’ ” which detailed the plight of a local fisherman who was struggling with a dwindling catch and tough regulations. No obvious candidates presented themselves for such a diverse community.Īnd this is where Billy Joel comes in. One exec joked it should be a woman carrying a Bloomingdale’s bag stepping out of a Lexus. They hired a Manhattan firm, Sean Michael Edwards Design, and attempted to answer the toughest question: What exactly constituted an “Islander”?
The Islanders won four Stanley Cups while wearing their original logo, a map of Long Island with the letters NY emblazoned on top. They rocketed from last to first in merchandise sales, leaving other sports franchises desperate to emulate that success.Īnd so the Islanders set out to ditch their logo - a map of Long Island with the letters NY emblazoned on top - which had been with the team since its founding in 1972. In 1988, the Los Angeles Kings had trumpeted their acquisition of Wayne Gretzky by unveiling a new silver-and-black look. “The easiest way to make a quick buck is to change the jersey around.” “They needed to get new fans, but they couldn’t afford arena upgrades or to buy good players,” Hirshon says. The team’s ownership group decided change was required. Equally alarming was the team’s appalling merchandise sales: The Islanders ranked 24th out of 26 NHL teams in apparel dollars. The underperforming club got swept by their hated rivals, the Rangers, in the 1994 playoffs, and attendance at the dilapidated Nassau Coliseum was flat-lining.
The Islanders had once been a powerhouse team that had won four straight Stanley Cups in the early 1980s. “It was a last-gasp attempt to rejuvenate a small-market team on the brink of collapse, and it failed due to poor planning, penny-pinching, miscommunication and misfortune,” says Nicholas Hirshon, a journalism professor at William Paterson University and the author of the new book “ We Want Fish Sticks: The Bizarre and Infamous Rebranding of the New York Islanders” (University of Nebraska Press, out Dec. The decision eventually turned into one of the biggest sports marketing disasters of all time and a debacle that still rankles local hockey fans decades later. In 1995, the New York Islanders decided to freshen the team’s look by introducing a new logo, jersey and mascot.
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