It was all Billy Joel’s fault.
In 1995, the New York Islanders decided to freshen the team’s look by introducing a new logo, jersey and mascot. The decision eventually turned into one of the biggest sports- marketing disasters of all time and a debacle that still rankles local hockey fans decades later.
“It was a last-gasp attempt to rejuvenate a small-market team on the brink of collapse, and it failed due to poor planning, penny-pinching, miscommunication and misfortune,” says Nicholas Hirshon, a journalism professor at William Paterson University and the author of the new book “We Want Fish Sticks: The Bizarre and Infamous Rebranding of the New York Islanders.