Does your ice hockey team have attractive young women scrape ice shavings during commercial breaks? The San Jose Sharks will now, because reasons.
After failing in the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the tenth straight year, team management decided no big changes were necessary for players or coaching. Instead, firing a popular TV color commentator and hiring cheerleaders to do in-game ice maintanence is going to give the team the boost they need to reach the finals.
I thought ice girls were a silly but inconsequential thing other teams did. The Shark Tank has been sold out for every game for years. Attendance is not a problem. Why do this sexist thing?
I know this isn’t a hockey message board, but what do the NHL fans think here?
The Blackhawks do it.
The girls can clearly skate and are actually working pretty hard out there and doing a job that needs to be done.
Yeah, it’s probably sexist given the outfits they wear, but if these young ladies want the job and can get themselves well paid I say more power to them.
It’s not to sell more tickets. Clearly they don’t need to do that. It’s a marketing thing. The marketing people think that they will make a profit on the new girls though posters and calendars and the like. They can probably also sell replica Ice Girls jerseys to the growing legion of female ice hockey fans. Ice Girls can make public relations appearances which will also drive sales of Sharks schwag. It makes perfect obvious sense to me.
The Caps have crews from the various youth hockey leagues clean the ice during timeouts. No skimpy outfits, even when it is a female team.
They do have the “Red Rockers” who cheer, throw t-shirts, make PR appearances, etc. It probably is a sign the franchise is struggling that they don’t seem to have enought material to make the tops reach to the pants.
I just remembered that in the early 80s I was at the Lakers game where the Laker Girls make their very first appearance. They were a total joke and maybe half a step above a High School cheer leading squad. No one now would doubt that that ended up being a good idea. They’ve made millions of dollars of profit for the franchise.
Googling around a bit it sounds like Washington and Montreal are the holdouts. Toronto just got some last March, right at the same time they tanked and missed the playoffs.