In both cases the team ignored red flags. The volatile Milbury had only two seasons of coaching experience and a reputation for strange behavior, while Spano’s attempts to buy two other NHL franchises had fallen through and his net worth had not been properly vetted.
Milbury’s dubious motivational techniques and Spano’s exposure as a con artist further damaged the fisherman brand. The team would have been much better off rebranding around an exciting player such as Žiggy Pálffy. Before a rebrand, sports marketers should coordinate with a team’s general manager to designate a handful of principal players to represent the new image, preferably ones with pleasant personalities, long- term contracts, and records of recent success or reasonable expectations of immediate performance. To ensure continuity the organization should avoid trading those players in the first few years after the rebrand is enacted.
The disastrous reception for the fisherman uniforms demonstrated the worth of the NHL’s third- jersey program. Inaugurated in 1996, the program allows teams to test new uniforms for a limited number of games and benefit from almost guaranteed bumps in revenue without catching criticism for completely abandoning their traditional sweaters.1 Had the Islanders continued wearing their original logo in most games and used the new logo on a third jersey, the fisherman would not have become such a lightning rod. “That was the lesson that I think people learned: sometimes, be careful. Don’t alienate your core base,” said Fred Scalera, the former vice president of licensing for NHL
Enterprises. “I guess what we all found out was that in the Islanders’
case, we alienated their core base of fans and they lashed out.”2
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In the aftermath of the fisherman jerseys, many sports franchises have elected to alternate between two logos in the course of a single season. The strategy could grow in popularity in coming years due to heightened concern over the sensitivity of team logos and monikers.
In particular, a handful of professional sports teams, including the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs and Washington Redskins, MLB’s Atlanta Braves and Cleveland Indians, and NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks, have come under attack for clinging to imagery that critics deem derogatory toward Native Americans. These clubs would be foolish to abandon the logos that have identified their franchises for decades and remove them from all uniforms and advertisements, as the Islanders did with their original logo. Instead, at least one franchise has chosen to downplay its classic crest but still retain it in some form. In 2016 the Indians moved their controversial Chief Wahoo logo, a red- faced, toothy caricature of a Native American, from their caps to their shoulder patches. The change allowed the Indians to appear sensitive to criticism from fans and media, and gradually phase out Chief Wahoo by the 2019 season, while temporarily retaining the logo that had appeared on the team’s top- selling cap the previous season.3
There is no accounting for taste when ranking the worst NHL uniforms of all time. The Gorton’s look- alike logo, dubious waves, and disjointed nameplates have placed the fisherman jersey high on almost every critic’s list. Still, professional hockey has produced plenty of clunkers that challenge the fisherman for worst- dressed status. There’s the barber- pole jerseys of the 1912– 13 Montreal Canadiens, with dizzy-ing stripes of red, white, and blue, and the Flying V uniforms unveiled by the Vancouver Canucks in 1978, with a deep V running from collar to crotch in a bizarre color scheme of yellow, orange, and black.4 The revolution in uniform design in the mid- 1990s also spawned the Mighty Ducks’ Wild Wing jerseys, with a cartoon duck in a goaltender’s mask bursting through a sheet of ice, and the Los Angeles Kings’ “Burger King” sweaters, featuring a king’s head similar to the mascot for the fast- food chain.5 In 1996 the St. Louis Blues commissioned outfits so unsightly, with an overabundance of trumpets and musical notes, that their coach reportedly refused to let his players wear them.6
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What separates the fisherman from other widely criticized NHL
designs, however, is the number of games in which it was worn. The Islanders wore the fisherman jersey for every game in the 1995– 96
season and the vast majority of games in 1996– 97. For the past two decades the most maligned NHL uniforms, including the Ducks’ Wild Wing and the Kings’ Burger King sweaters, were seen in a much smaller number of games, and discarded with much greater ease than the fisherman, as part of the third- jersey program.
Even if the fisherman jerseys do not stand alone as the worst hockey uniforms ever, the Islanders’ rebranding in the mid- 1990s stakes a strong claim as the worst sports- branding effort of all time. In public memory the rebrand is associated with not only the questionable aesthetics of the jerseys but also three last- place seasons from 1994– 95
to 1996– 97 that were marked by one humiliation after another. In the span of just twenty- eight months the Islanders witnessed more embarrassment than most teams endure over twenty- eight years.
There were the Gorton’s comparisons and the “We want fish sticks!”
chants, leading to mockery in international media and fans turning against the team by starting newsletters and protesting in the parking lot. There was the trading of a fan favorite for a player who refused to report and tanked, leading to the firing of a general manager and the rise of a replacement who clashed with his players and the alumni of a dynasty team. The mascot drew comparisons to fire hydrants and mountain men, and the man in the costume ended up taking the team to court. The arena deteriorated into the worst in the league. Control shifted from an absentee owner to a con artist to two men more concerned with real estate than real improvement. All the bad times were associated with the fisherman.
Stunningly, the men associated with the rebrand fell into even greater disrepute over the years. John Spano, after serving time for charges relating to the botched Islanders sale, was sent back behind bars twice more. He spent four years in prison for theft and forgery from 2005 to 2009, reentered society and appeared in the ESPN documentary in 2013, and then was sentenced to another ten years in 2015
on more forgery charges.7 The group that engineered the rebranding 189
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campaign also ran afoul of the law. In 2009 Paul Greenwood and Stephen Walsh, two members of the Gang of Four, were charged with using their commodities- trading firm to steal from investors in order to buy cars, horse farms, and a collection of stuffed animals.8 Greenwood was sentenced to a decade in prison, while Walsh, the strongest advocate of the fisherman jersey, got twenty years.9 A subsequent co- owner, Sanjay Kumar, was sentenced to twelve years in prison in 2006 after pleading guilty to charges of conspiracy, fraud, and obstruction of justice stemming from his tenure as a chief executive officer at a large software company.10 At one point the sentences of Spano, Greenwood, Walsh, and Kumar meant that members from three of the past four Islanders ownerships had served time, a trail tracing back to the fisherman era and inevitably affecting how fans remember the rebrand.
“We lead the league in convicted felons,” cracked Tom Croke of the defunct Support the Islanders Coalition.11
The misadventures of Mike Milbury also added to the infamy of the fisherman jerseys. Milbury, who was brought into the Islanders organization as part of the rebrand, remained the general manager until June 8, 2006, and stayed on as senior vice president until May 29, 2007, outliving the fisherman jerseys by a decade.12 By the time he left the franchise the man who was chosen as the public face of the Islanders in the fisherman era had become a public enemy. He presided over seven losing seasons. He fired seven coaches. He traded away all the best players from the mid- 1990s teams, including Bryan Berard, Todd Bertuzzi, Travis Green, Scott Lachance, Bryan McCabe, Žiggy Pálffy, Robert Reichel, Tommy Salo, Mathieu Schneider, and Bryan Smolinski, only to watch them flourish with other franchises. One newspaper nominated Milbury for a lifetime achievement award for bad trades.13 It is even more difficult for Islanders fans to forget about Milbury’s fa
ilings since he remains in the public eye as a television analyst for NBC.
Similarly, the players who wore fisherman jerseys are hard for Islanders fans to embrace. In a cruel twist the only mass- produced figurine ever made of an Islanders player in a fisherman jersey was a four- inch-tall Starting Lineup statuette of Kirk Muller, whose refusal to report 190
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to the team placed him on par with Milbury among the most despised figures in club history. Fittingly, the Muller figurines, which still float around for sale online, were packaged with a card showing him in the jersey of the Montreal Canadiens, the franchise he never wanted to leave.14 The most productive Islander to wear the fisherman jersey was Žiggy Pálffy, but Milbury traded him in 1999 to Los Angeles, where he racked up even more points than he had on Long Island. Among the other well- known players to wear fisherman jerseys, Wendel Clark and Robert Reichel were traded before they could cement their legacies on Long Island. Several prominent players of the period diluted their goodwill among Islanders fans by suiting up for the hated Rangers, including rookie of the year Bryan Berard, captain Pat Flatley, highly touted defenseman Bryan McCabe, goalie Jamie McLennan, all- star Mathieu Schneider, and fan favorites Darius Kasparaitis and Rich Pilon. Éric Fichaud and Tommy Söderström never developed into the goalies of the future. Other Islanders went on to greater success elsewhere— Todd Bertuzzi in Vancouver, Tommy Salo in Edmonton, Bryan Smolinski in Los Angeles, and Martin Straka in Pittsburgh. In 2004 Bertuzzi drew a twenty- game suspension, one of the longest in NHL history, for seriously injuring a player by sucker- punching him from behind and driving his face into the ice. It was the type of violent behavior clearly rooted in his upbringing with the Islanders.
In 2000 the Islanders were purchased by a group led by Charles Wang, the chairman of Computer Associates.15 Under Wang’s ownership merchandise with the fisherman logo returned to the concession stands at Nassau Coliseum, and the team ran a one- night promotion in 2015 in which Islanders players skated in warm- ups in jerseys bearing the fisherman. After Wang moved the Islanders to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn for the 2015– 2016 season, the team unveiled its most original uniform in twenty years, a third jersey with the NY from the original logo and a black- and- white color scheme.
To match the Islanders’ black- and- white uniforms, goaltender Jaroslav Halak commissioned a new mask in the same colors, but with the fisherman logo above the center of the cage. In his first game in the mask the usually reliable Halak gave up three goals on only eleven 191
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shots and was pulled after one period.16 Islanders fans on social media blamed his headwear.17 A month later Halak donned the mask again and had another awful game, allowing three goals on the first eight shots he saw.18 As superstitious fans debated the curse of the fisherman, Halak stopped wearing the mask. However, the Islanders went ahead with plans to give away ten thousand miniature replicas of the helmet at a game in March 2016. On Instagram, fans responded to a photograph of the mask with mockery. One commented, “Why is the old fisherman logo at the top??? Terrible.”19 On the night that his helmet was handed out, Halak performed well until late in the third period, when he stretched to make a routine save, grabbed his leg in pain, and skated toward the dressing room.20 The next day the Islanders announced that their top goaltender had suffered a groin injury and would miss the next six to eight weeks, effectively ending his season and dimming the team’s hopes of a deep playoff run.21 The string of unlucky events supported the idea of a fisherman logo curse. As one sports radio host posted on Twitter, “There’s a special kind of bad karma to get a long term injury on a night tied to a promotion.”22
Further damaging the reputation of the fisherman logo are the Rangers fans who have kept needling the Islanders over the Gorton’s similarity for the past twenty years. Islanders statistician Eric Hornick, who has worked for the team since 1982, has heard the taunts many times in recent seasons. “To this day when the Islanders go into the Garden and things are not going well, you’ll hear Rangers fans chanting, ‘We want fish sticks!’”23
Despite the controversy over the Islanders rebrand, the fisherman jersey holds special significance for the men who wore it. At the time the players were interviewed for this book in 2015, almost every one still had the uniform they wore two decades earlier. Asked why they would keep an article of clothing they disliked, many players cited playing a plurality of their NHL games— or, in some cases, their first or last shifts in the league— with the fisherman on their chests. Others said the jersey was proof they reached the highest level of professional hockey. In a typical response, Mathieu Schneider said, “Playing in this league is a privilege no matter what you say about any given jersey.”
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Dan Plante, who spent his entire four- year career with the Islanders, said the jersey reminded him of his journey from small- town Wisconsin, where he grew up and used to compete in lumberjack contests, to the world’s biggest market. “I was a northern Wisconsin hillbilly and got to go to New York,” he said. “It was quite a different way of life.
I’ve got nothing but great memories about Long Island and the area and the franchise, for sure.” An exception to the rule was Chris Taylor, who said the fisherman was the only jersey he ever gave away. “I don’t think I liked the design. I didn’t think it had the Islander tradition.”
Darius Kasparaitis, who also gave his away at some point, was looking to buy a replacement online, so he could wear it in pickup games and
“get abused by my friends.” The fisherman was the last NHL jersey ever worn by Bob Halkidis, but he doesn’t have one either, because he spent almost the entire season in the minor leagues.24
Several players said the penny- pinching Islanders charged them to take their sweaters home. Paul Kruse may have paid more than any of his teammates. A gritty fourth- liner, Kruse once received a $1,000
fine for breaking a new rule against fighting before puck drop. He heard that most teams were reimbursing players, so he asked Mike Milbury about covering the cost. Not surprisingly, Milbury balked.
“I said, ‘Well, what about my jerseys? Can I have both my jerseys?’”
Kruse remembered. “And he thought about it for a minute. He was riding the bike. And he goes, ‘Yeah, you can have ’em.’ So essentially those two jerseys cost me $1,000.” Actually, the price Kruse paid may have been a steal. Nostalgia has built up so much over the years that online sellers have asked for as much as $1,000 for a single fisherman jersey that was not even worn in a game. For most players the sentimental value of the uniform exceeds whatever they could make on eBay. Jason Herter, a career minor leaguer, played his only NHL
game in a fisherman jersey and returned to the minors without it. A few years later he contacted the Islanders about getting the uniform back. Milbury mailed it free of charge.25
Other players disobeyed the Islanders in order to retain their fisherman gear. When Bryan Smolinski was traded in 1999, he took his hockey bag, emblazoned with the fisherman logo, to Los Angeles. One 193
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day the Kings equipment manager told Smolinski that the Islanders wanted the bag back, even though the team had reverted back to the classic crest. “I’m like, ‘Well, you can go tell them to screw themselves.
I’m not giving it back. It’s not even the logo!’” Smolinski said. “Why did they want the bag back? I think they wanted to use the bag.”26
The game- worn fisherman jerseys were scattered around the world, wherever the players put them. They were hanging on the wall of Brent Severyn’s athletic performance center in Plano, Texas, and sitting in Robert Reichel’s basement in the Czech Republic. Tommy Söderström’s was somewhere in his attic. Travis Green left his with his parents. In Sweden the thirteen- year- old son of Niklas Andersson had a poster in his room that showed his father in the fisherman sweater. Dad kept the uniform itself in his garage. Rich Pilon, meanwhile, said he kept his jersey in the bedro
om closet, ready to go whenever a special moment struck. “My wife liked it,” he explained. “Sometimes when we go to bed at night, she wants me to wear it.” Then he burst into laughter and said he was only joking.27
In interviews for this book, the men involved in rebranding the Islanders expressed frustration over the tendency to oversimplify and mischaracterize what went wrong, and they seemed eager to explain the rationale behind their widely criticized decisions. They were disappointed over the outcome of the rebranding, but also at peace. Ed O’Hara, whose design firm created Nyisles and the fisherman jerseys, admitted the team erred in changing its identity, and he acknowledged that better research by his company, SME, would have caught the logo’s similarity to the Gorton’s character before it was released.
“Look, 100 percent, it was a mistake,” he said. O’Hara chalked up the missteps as a learning experience that taught SME to seek feedback from fans, sponsors, and news media before introducing a new brand.
Far from losing business over the disastrous Islanders rebrand, SME
became a leading sports- branding firm, developing brands for the World Series, the NBA Finals, the Kentucky Derby, the Indianapolis 500, and Madison Square Garden, as well as many collegiate and professional teams. Despite O’Hara’s success, though, some people still associate him with the fisherman jerseys. “We’ve done twenty 194
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uniforms in the NHL. We’ve done fifteen in the NBA. And this is the one that people keep talking about. We’ve had a lot of notoriety on all our other work, but this one always comes up. And I always say, ‘You know, Babe Ruth struck out two thousand times.’”28 The reference was fitting. Among its many contracts, SME became the agency of record for Ruth’s former team, and perhaps the most recognizable brand in professional sports, the New York Yankees.
The fisherman jerseys did not hinder the careers of any Islanders executives. Pat Calabria, the team’s vice president of communications and point person on the rebrand, went on to become a vice president at a state university in Farmingdale, Long Island. Looking back, he pointed out that the people tasked with rolling out the jerseys had no control over the losing on the ice, which probably hurt the rebrand more than anything else. “Was it the right decision or the wrong decision? I think you could debate that,” he said. “What I will say is, if it was the right decision, it was made at the wrong time.”29
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