Our reviews of newly announced promotions for the upcoming hockey season continue and now they take us to the minor leagues. Last week we talked about how the Vegas Golden Knights will have a special ticket package with Frank Sinatra bobbleheads for Italian Heritage night for their Oct. 20 game. Now an AHL team is honoring the Italian-American community in a different, but more creative and hysterical, way.
The Boston Bruins AHL team is the Providence Bruins and Providence, Rhode Island has a pretty sizable Italian population. Rhode Island has the second largest Italian-American population out of the 50 states by percentage. Their “Little Italy” area known as Federal Hill was ranked as the United States third best.
The baby Bruins will pay tribute to their Italian neighbors by rebranding themselves as the Providence Fighting Parms. They’re not the first AHL team with a special temporary name inspired by Italian food. Last season saw the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Penguins call themselves the “Old Forge Pizzas” to pay tribute to their area unique take on the pizza pie.
The Bruins will become the Fighting Parms for the Oct. 18 game against the Hartford Wolfpack, the AHL affiliate of the New York Rangers. A special ticket package that was for sale offered fans a ticket to the game as well as a special T-shirt with the “Fighting Parms” logo. The “parms” name is an obvious reference to the Italian style of cooking that brought us chicken parmigiana and eggplant parmigiana.
The logo shows off a temporary mascot of what appears to be a bird covered in cheese, much like parmigiana type delicacies. The mascot begs the question is the “parm” in question is chicken, meatball or eggplant. Normally the Providence Bruins have a bear mascot named “Samboni” just like their parent club in Boston.
The round, bird like creature resembles a meatball (topped with a single basil leaf) but according the to the team’s X post it’s chicken for the eponymous chicken parm. It features a “mozzarella mug” and hockey gloves and pants made out tomato sauce (or gravy, depending on what you call it) for the “plucky parm”.
ESPN hockey analyst John Buccigross has become known as a chicken parm connoisseur. It all started when some stray tomato sauce ended up on Ray Ferraro’s shirt earning him the nickname “chicken parm”. No word on if he’ll be in attendance for the promotion that’s sure to be right up his alley. The Providence Bruins even ended their post with his famous catch phrase “winner winner chicken parm dinner”.
No word on the fate of those magnificent marinara jerseys once the promotion night has passed. If they end up like other special edition jerseys they will probably get auctioned off. If they do we’ll try to get one. Wouldn't it look great next to our Frank Sinatra Golden Knights bobblehead?