The holidays are approaching, which means it’s teddy bear toss season in the WHL.
The teddy bear toss is simple. Fans are encouraged to bring teddy bears to the game, and after the home team scores its first goal the teddy bears get tossed onto the ice. They are then collected and donated to local charities.
Everett had its first teddy bear experience of the season on Saturday when the Tips played in Portland’s teddy bear toss. I’m told it’s the only teddy bear game Everett is subjected to this season, which is in stark contrast to last year, when the Tips played in four teddy bear toss games.
This season every team in the WHL either has held or is going to hold a teddy bear toss — except one: Everett.
The Tips are the last holdout, and there’s a reason for that. In Everett’s inaugural season in 2003 the Tips held a teddy bear toss. The team went all out, having the players put teddy bears on every seat at what is now Xfinity Arena. However, there was one tactical mistake: it was scheduled for a game against Seattle. There are always a substantial number of T-birds fans who come to Everett for the games because of the teams’ proximity to one another. When Seattle opened the scoring the T-bird fans, who conveniently had teddy bears placed on their seats, decided to unleash. This happened again when Seattle scored its second goal, and again when the T-birds scored their third, each time requiring a delay to clear the bears off the ice. Meanwhile, the Tips hadn’t found the net, and they pulled their goalie late in the third period despite trailing by three, desperately trying to avoid being shut out on teddy bear toss night. It didn’t work. The T-birds scored into the empty net, the restless fans decided not to wait any longer, and the final seconds of the game had to be run off with the T-birds sitting on the bench and the Tips back in the locker room. It was a fiasco.
The next season the Tips decided to replace the teddy bears with toques, and they scheduled it against an Eastern Conference foe, Swift Current. The changes didn’t alter Everett’s fortunes as the Tips were shut out again. This time the Tips had everyone toss their toques during the second intermission, so at least there wasn’t the same kind of chaos as the year before. But still, it wasn’t what the team was hoping.
Everett hasn’t had a toss night since. As long as there’s anyone still working in the front office who was around those first two seasons, it probably won’t happen again.
But it’s possible that after being left dormant for a decade — and the fact Everett shut out Kamloops on its teddy bear toss last season to change its karma — the curse has lifted, right?
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