1895

Adams wanted the team colors to be brown and yellow after his store chain’s color scheme. The brown bear, aka Bruin, fit perfectly. The team would keep their original color scheme until the ’38-’39 season. The Bruins would then adopt the franchise’s current colors, black, white and gold.

The Home-white, Away-dark color scheme was the basis for the whiteout. Everyone in the arena, including the players, would wear white, and the effect was nothing short of dazzling. In 2003, the NHL switched the jersey scheme, so that the home teams started wearing their dark jerseys.

January 1980

Black

Adams directed Ross to come up with a nickname that would portray an untamed animal displaying speed, agility and cunning. Ross came up with “Bruins”, a name for brown bears used in classic folk tales (from the Dutch “Bruin”, the name of the bear in Reynard the Fox, literal meaning “brown”).

Navy Blue

Orange

Bridgestone Arena

The Nashville Predators may be just a 20-year-old team, but their mascot is ancient. The team was named after the bones of a saber-toothed tiger found beneath a Nashville building. But the team isn’t called the Tigers. They’re called the Predators, which encompasses a whole plethora of hungry species.

Named for the pair of elongated bladelike canine teeth in their upper jaw, they are often called sabre-toothed tigers or sabre-toothed lions, although the modern lion and tiger are true cats of the subfamily Felinae. Sabre-toothed cat (Smilodon).

1998

3

Nico Hischier

22 years (January 4, 1999)

The team continued to struggle, and in 1982 the franchise was again relocated, this time to New Jersey, and renamed the Devils. (The name, selected through a fan contest, originates from the Jersey Devil, a mythical creature that was said to roam the New Jersey Pine Barrens.)