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SLAM! Sports 2000 All-Star Game SLAM! Hockey ALL-STAR GAME INTERACTIVE ALSO ON SLAM!  |
Saturday, February 5, 2000Fuzzy suits talking shopNHL mascots hold first summitCurtis Joseph and World Team starting goaltender Roman Turek may think they have the toughest job in hockey this all-star weekend but they're wrong. Glenn Street has that job hands down. Street, the president of Street Characters, has the never-a-dull-moment task of chaperoning all 16 NHL mascots in town to and from the various All-star game events. It's the fourth consecutive year the mascots have had a presence at the annual all-star weekend. It's not that big a stretch to call Street a father figure of sorts for the NHL's costumed cheerleaders because his company has designed over half the outfits he'll be surrounded by this weekend. Street himself was the original mascot in the NHL both creating and starring as Harvey the Hound, the Calgary Flames mascot from 1984 to 1992 before Street Characters started taking up all his time. All 16 mascots on hand yesterday took part in a raucous ball hockey affair at the NHL FANtasy exhibit with the teachers from the Hockey@School educational program. Later in the day the furry creatures and Street got together for the first ever Mascots Summit. The obvious question is what exactly would a bunch of mascots have to discuss? Street says the answer is plenty. "To my knowledge this will be the first real exchange of information (among mascots)," he said. "The reason we're doing it is some teams are very successful with their characters and others are struggling a little bit so if something is working extremely well for one team they can share it with the others and hopefully everyone gains from it. The mascots were taking everything in stride yesterday making life difficult for a CITY TV cameraman who dared to enter their dressing room and set up a shot. "Cool Shots is coming and I've told them their host can actually chair the summit," Street announced to the lounging mascots between appearances. The host is Jennifer Smith, someone Sabretooth, the Sabres mascot, is clearly familiar with. "Oh yeah, I like her," said Sabretooth when the news was announced. Despite all the clowning around, Street says mascoting is serious business for NHL clubs. "A lot of people don't realize this but this is an industry," said Smart. "We have clients in Major League Baseball, the NFL, basically on every continent in the world with the exception of Antarctica. It's a multi-million dollar business. Teams are discovering that if they do this properly, these things can actually be a profit centre for them." Sabretooth then cracks up the room mooning the CITY TV camera as the young videographer is about to do his standup. 
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