History
Previous owner Brian Shaw was a pioneer in many aspects of Junior Hockey, not only moving a team to the United States for the first time, but also is credited with designing the current CHL championship format of the champion from each of the three leagues (WHL, OHL, and QMJHL) as well as a host-city team competing for the Memorial Cup. Portland won the Memorial Cup in 1983 and 1998.
The Winterhawks were also pioneers of promotion and are credited with the invention of the "Dash for Cash" where contestants are picked to run onto the ice and try to scoop up as many silver dollars in 2 minutes as they could. This popular promotion has been running for many years. Also, in late November/early December, they hold their annual teddy bear toss, which fans throw teddy bears on the ice at the first Portland goal, which are then donated to local children's charities. On December 6, 2008, fans threw out 22,392 teddy bears after Luke Walker scored Portland's first goal against Seattle.
The Winterhawks wear jerseys similar to those of the Chicago Blackhawks of the National Hockey League, causing some to erroneously assume that the Winterhawks are a minor league farm team of the Blackhawks. In actuality, the jerseys originally worn by the first Winterhawks team were a used set of Chicago jerseys obtained through connections between the owners of the two teams. In early photos, the old Chicago jerseys are identifiable by the letter C with crossed tomahawks on the shoulder crest. The Winterhawks eventually changed the C to a P.
The Portland-Chicago connection runs even deeper, as the Blackhawks were founded in 1926 by Frederic McLaughlin, who simply bought the contracts of most of the members of the Portland Rosebuds and brought them to Chicago.
Over the past two decades, the Winterhawks have worn several unique alternate jerseys, one of which is black with a red and white Portland skyline and the word PORTLAND around the bottom hem. In recent years, they wore a white alternate jersey loosely based on a Montreal Canadiens jersey. Instead of the Canadiens' 'CH' logo, the jersey had the word PORTLAND in outlined letters across the front stripe, and the Canadiens' blue accents were replaced with black. Other special alternate jerseys have included annual tributes to the Portland Buckaroos, and jerseys with pink ribbons on the shoulders for breast cancer awareness.
In 2009-10, the Winterhawks introduced an alternate "Hawk Eyes" logo as part of a new advertising campaign that featured lightning flashes on a mottled black background and the SMS-style words, "LOC8, NTMD8, DVST8" (read: "locate, intimidate, devastate"). In 2010-11, an alternate Hawk Head logo was added, with a similar design as the Blackhawks logo, but featuring only the three team colors: red, white, and black. A new third jersey was also created with the Hawk Eyes on the front over stylized, mottled black fabric throughout; player names, numbers and accents are in gunmetal gray, and the new tri-color Hawk Head is featured as the shoulder patch.
Read more about this topic: Portland Winterhawks
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Humankind has understood history as a series of battles because, to this day, it regards conflict as the central facet of life.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)