Deachman: Ottawa’s PWHL team name barely provides a ‘charge’

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When my editor asked what I thought of Ottawa Charge, my initial reaction was, “Yes, finally! This city needs more EV charging stations!”

But alas, that’s not what he was talking about. Ottawa Charge, he explained, is the new, long-awaited name of Ottawa’s Professional Women’s Hockey League team, following its inaugural season as simply PWHL Ottawa, the sporting equivalent of the generic No Name brand.

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I confess my heart sank a little when I heard the new name.

And then he sent me the team’s new logo, which looks like a cross between a blindfolded seven-year-old’s spiky rendition of the NHL’s Calgary Flames emblem and something you might use to identify, well, an EV charging station.

And my crest fell, a lot.

Seriously, if you’re going to name your club Ottawa Charge and then borrow an NHL team logo, wouldn’t you pick the Tampa Bay Lightning’s — a lightning bolt inside the letter ‘O’?

On its website, the PWHL describes Ottawa’s new brand as both “inspiring” and “inspired,” which I suppose is at least technically true, with some of the inspiration coming from the city’s official motto: “Advance – Ottawa – En Avant,” itself not even remotely an arousing slogan. It’s baffling to think that anyone would try to spin some good-old-hockey-game excitement from it, you’d have to squint so hard.

Similarly, though, we must concede that the new name and logo are inspiring, at least judging by the online ridicule they’ve been generating this week.

“‘Ottawa Charge’ sounds like a phrase an Albertan would use to complain about taxes,” wrote one, while I have a hard time disagreeing with the person who suggested that “PWHL Ottawa was a better name.” And this gem, regarding the logo: “Can we get the NHL Flames to sue for copyright infringement and fix this mess for the fans?”

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But the league, having this week announced new nicknames and logos for all six teams — New York Sirens, Boston Fleet (with a sideways Hartford Whalers logo), Montreal Victoire, Minnesota Freeze and Toronto Sceptres — appears to be charging full-speed ahead.

“‘Charge’ speaks to an electrifying force that pulses through Ottawa’s river and streets, through the stands of the arena and on the ice, driving us all only in one direction: forever forward.” says the PWHL’s online announcement, sounding for all the world like a vision statement by an artist applying for an Ontario Arts Council grant.

And then there’s that whole Ottawa-as-the-seat-of-power thing. How did they put it? Oh, right – “Ottawa leads as the seat of power in the country,” said the league’s senior VP of business operations, Amy Scheer. You know – power, energy, electricity, charge … that sort of thing. But electricity can also be static, as in the enthusiasm this new name is mustering.

The propensity to moor franchises and brands to the city’s political roots might seem natural, but it’s also puzzling considering the time and energy people spend criticizing the federal government.

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Remember the Peace Tower logo that Bruce Firestone et al. proposed back in 1989 when they were angling to revive the Ottawa Senators (also a poor name, but for its historical tie to the original poorly named club)? True, the Peace Tower is unique to Ottawa (and, like Calgary’s NHL logo, has some history of flames shooting out of it), but the Centre Block is better known for committees and commissions, not scintillating end-to-end rushes. By the time the newly formed Sens took to the ice in 1992, the Peace Tower logo had quietly — thankfully — been jettisoned – though inexplicably replaced by a Roman centurion/Trojan condom salesman.

Meanwhile, the PWHL appears boastful regarding the speed with which it developed the teams’ names and logos, hiring a New York-based creative agency and “completing a project that often takes sports teams two years in less than one.” Though perhaps I’m misreading that; maybe they’re not boasting, but rather apologizing, as in “Normally this takes a couple of years to do properly, but we found someone who would do it in a hurry.”

I suppose we’ll get used to it. Sadly, we always do.

But fans here literally went hoarse shouting “Go, Ottawa, go!” throughout the team’s inaugural, almost anonymous, season, and I think we’d gladly endure another year howling the same generic rallying cry, rather than “Charge!,” if we thought we were charging ahead to something better.

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