Quote:
Originally Posted by Howie_16
This might be something to do with age and how long someone has been a Flames fan.
The younger fan must have remembered Blasty fondly as their first Flames jersey. The older fan (like me) will remember how the Pedestal/Blasty jerseys were when our franchise took a huge nosedive, had move on from players like MacInnis, Nieuwendyk, Fleury strictly for league-wide financial reasons, etc.
Yes, Blasty was a part of the Flames resurgence with Iginla's 50 goal season and was worn a few times in the magical 2003-2004 season, but for older fans like me, we also remember the Canucks flying skate jerseys and I think that may be why we see it and you don't.
My kids like the Blasty jersey, so if they want one, I'll buy it for them. The Flames brought back the full time retros home and away, so I will likely buy myself a new Adidas away jersey. It really is a win-win situation for Flames fans.
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Agreed. This thread has actually been an interesting look into how different fan groups perceive the franchise and identify with different eras and their symbols. Despite my age group mostly being fans of the horse head, my memories of the pedestal and the horse head are similar to yours. I'm kind of attributing that to how few people of my age were actually really Flames fans before the Iginla era. It was definitely a small minority in my age group that actually cheered for the Flames during the dark years and I remember well how uncool the Flames were to my peers. So, I would think probably most current Flames fans in my age group didn't feel the pain of those times because they weren't really fans yet, but when they became fans during Iginla's emergence and the '04 run they acquired positive associations with the horst head instead. The dark years were basically meaningless to them.
It also probably reflects the impact of having a long playoff run on the fan base. If the Flames had missed the playoffs that year, they probably wouldn't have captured the hearts of all those new fans and would have missed out on galvanizing the support of a whole generation of Calgarians. The '04 run was a watershed couple of months in building fans for what has mostly been a team with very mediocre achievement and some periods of real darkness in the last 30 years.