Ah, Saint Patrick’s Day. The yearly event where numerous sects of Christianity celebrate the feast of one Saint Patrick, the 5th century Christian missionary charged with converting the Irish pagans and driving snakes out of Ireland (lol OK). The day is filled with all kinds of traditional celebrations such as drinking too much with your roving pack of hooligans, putting shamrocks all over the goddamn place, and eating sub par food.
Or my favorite tradition — well established #brands selling St. Patrick’s Day themed merchandise that has little to no connection to … anything at all really. And when it comes to this, the NHL is king.
Those astute readers out there who smartly wait for my next content to drop will notice this is not the first time I’ve written about St. Patrick’s Day themed merchandise. And you might think I should probably get over how mad on line this crap makes me, but I’m an adult who makes his own decisions, so maybe stop judging me so much.
Regardless, I decided to take a deeper look into what the NHL is offering this year, because apparently I enjoy getting angry.
If you head on over to Shop.NHL.com, you’ll notice that they’re heavily promoting this garbage, and when you look a little closer you can understand why — they currently have 555 different St. Patrick’s Day themed pieces of merchandise for you to choose from.
This pisses me off for a number of reasons.
First off, what in the actual hell is going on here? Like, do we really need that many options? Some perspective: if you go and shop the “men’s” department (Only men wear baseball caps by the way. You learn something new every day!) on the Flyers section of the site, there are a total of 632 items. 632 items for a well-established NHL team, very close to the same number of items available for a third rate holiday (at best). Last I checked the NHL was in the business of selling hockey, but what do I know?
Thirdly, there’s a question about demand here. See, I’m well versed in the science of hockey economics, and my training has taught me one thing: the NHL isn’t going to offer merchandise that the people don’t want. So apparently, there are some people out there who not only want this stuff, but also want a variety to choose from. The hat and green plaid jersey just aren’t enough! They need the socks (seriously they are selling socks look it up I’m not lying) to put the whole outfit together.
WHO THE HELL ARE THESE PEOPLE? Surely, they are jerks and probably bad people and oh my, this just makes too much sense…
OF COURSE there are only a few left. Unfortunately, it seems the NHL missed an opportunity to take advantage of their target demo — I don’t seen green mayo offered on the site.
Aside from the fact that people actually want this garbage, there are some glaring missteps taken by the NHL in this year’s crop of merch. Last time I wrote about this, I was justifiably pissed off that they just slapped “Mc” and “O'” to the beginning of players’ last names on shirseys and such. This year, it appears they have sobered up a bit, opting to just make everything green and plaid and call it a day.
However, they seem to have done this so much that they gave up some pretty clear slam-dunks. Ovechkin should be O’Vechkin and Oshie should be O’Shie. THIS ISN’T HARD. For god’s sake, NHL, if you’re going to make this crap you may as well go full crap when it’s sitting right there in front of you.
And that brings me to the thing that pissed me off the most about this year’s merch. Look at this hat. Seriously, look at it. Take a deep long look and think about it.
Imagine the following scene where Chad, a guy who definitely participates in St. Patrick’s Day pub-crawls and wears salmon colored shorts and boat shoes and attends Georgetown University (*eyeroll* of course), shows off this hat to his incredibly handsome and smart and also humble friend Albert.
Chad: “Hey broseph check out my St. Patrick’s Day Wild hat.
Albert: “…What makes it a St. Patrick’s Day hat?”
Chad: “Well, see it’s green.”
Albert: “….And?”
Chad: “I don’t follow, brah.”
Albert: “See the thing is, one of the Wild’s primary colors is green. And actually the shade of green they use is pretty damn close to the green on that hat. You’d think to clear up this problem for teams that use green they’d I don’t know, put a shamrock or something on it, or at the very least use a different shade of green you know?”
Chad: “Wow, I sure am incredibly stupid.”
Albert: “Yes, Chad. Yes you are.”
Come to think of it, it’s pretty damn funny that the Wild aren’t allowed to celebrate this holiday properly, what with the fact that they are the outcast of the NHL and their fans are terrible. Regardless, the point still stands.
So please, for the love of all that is good, don’t be like Chad. Chads all around the world are responsible for this garbage existing. Be someone cooler. Someone like Albert. Someone who doesn’t spend his hard earned money on things that are bad, and instead opts to purchase only things that are good.
Trust me, no one who is sane thinks this stuff is good, and all the Alberts of the world are judging the hell out of you when you wear it.
