Towel Power

Towel Power is a term used by the Vancouver Canucks of National Hockey League (NHL) to describe the waving of towels by their fans. It can also refer to the general waving of towels at stadiums and arenas in other sports in order to give a morale boost to the home team, which was initiated with Myron Cope's Terrible Towel gimmick for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Hockey

The tradition of "Towel Power" was started by the Vancouver Canucks of the National Hockey League (NHL). During the 1982 Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Canucks were playing the Chicago Black Hawks when Vancouver coach Roger Neilson, fed up with the performance of the officials in the game, placed a white towel on the end of a hockey stick and held it up in mock of Surrender (white flag).The Canucks players sitting on the bench followed suit, placing towels on the ends of their sticks until the bench resembled a laundry line. Although the Canucks lost that game 4–1, Neilson's actions inadvertently began quite a trend as, when the teams returned to Vancouver for the next game, many fans brought white towels to the game and began waving them above their heads. Referred to as Towel Power, this sparked the Canucks to win the next three games and the series, taking them to the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time in franchise history, which they eventually lost to the New York Islanders.

Red and blue towels, waved by fans of the Calgary Flames and Toronto Maple Leafs respectively, followed the Towel Power trend. For the playoffs, fans of the Anaheim Ducks also wave "Fowl Towels". Now, towels are used by nearly every NHL team during the playoffs to create a sea of waving towels.

This tradition has since spread to other sports, and around the world.

Baseball

The most notable use of towel-waving in baseball has been by the fans of the Minnesota Twins of Major League Baseball, who introduced the Homer Hanky in 1987. The Homer Hanky was officially produced by the "Minneapolis Star Tribune" and is a handkerchief printed with a baseball-shaped logo during Twins playoff campaigns (and sometimes the following season). The logo is usually red, but was blue in 2003.

External links

* [http://www.vancouverhistory.ca/chronology1982.htm Complete description of the "Towel Power" night from vancouverhistory.ca]
* [http://www.towelpower.net Towelpower.net - Canucks opinion and blog site named after the 1982 phenomenon]