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And you thought Chance was a bad mascot

Posted on by Ellis Frederick

It was the evening of October 13, 2017. I was at work, sitting in a conference room, passing time on Twitter. And then I stumbled upon him.

What the hell is that? I wondered to myself. Apparently, that was the Vegas Golden Knights’ new mascot. Chance, the Gila monster.

I was confused. Was a knight not an option? Or even a dragon? Why did he look like one of Barney’s friends? I furled my brows as I stared longer at the tweet. That, I thought, is a bad mascot.

I wasn’t the only one questioning this choice from the Golden Knights. Chance was compared to a lizard-like Star Wars character, the Fantastic Four’s Thing, and — my personal favorite — a piece of fruit.

Still, as time has gone on, I’ve grown to adore Chance, and it seems many VGK fans have done the same. The mascot has a respectable 12.2K followers on Twitter, and now he’s slated to make his video game debut in NHL 19. Chance is cute! Just look at that smile! And given the desert landscape of Las Vegas, it’s not like this Gila monster is totally out of place.

You know what would be out of place anywhere, though? This:

Say hello to Gritty, the new mascot of the Philadelphia Flyers.

There is a lot to unpack here. What is Gritty? I’ve come up with a few ideas, including:

  1. A Halloween pumpkin in the process of becoming a werewolf
  2. A demented lion with cankles and ill-fitting biking shorts
  3. Youppi! after a rough night out
  4. One of the heffalumps in Winnie the Pooh’s nightmares

The Flyers website has many details about Gritty, but I think this tidbit says the most:

A number of times he’s been caught eating snow straight from the Zamboni machine, and unbeknown to most, his love of hot dogs has been inflating the Flyers Dollar Dog Night consumption totals for years.

This makes so much sense and absolutely no sense at all. Whatever Gritty is, he’s a beautiful disaster.

This mascot reveal has opened my eyes. I think I speak for all of VGK Nation when I say that we owe Chance an apology. Over the past year, Chance has become a bright yellow symbol of joy for the Golden Knights. He is now a celebrity at every game, with thousands of fans lining up to meet him. Maybe he was the mascot we didn’t deserve, but the one we needed.

Thank you for helping us realize how good we had it, Gritty.

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