Whither Screech?

Written by slanch

Friday, 20 March 2009 10:43

screech_screaming_eagle_mascot The Screaming Eagles of Cape Breton are a Canadian junior hockey team who should be gearing themselves up for the playoffs, instead, the team is desperately searching for its missing mascot.

Club officials reported that, after finding a supply door unlocked, they found that their $5,000 Screech the Eagle mascot costume was missing. It was last seen March 11.

"I’m doing OK," Peter MacDonald, the hockey club’s director of marketing, said Thursday afternoon. "I’d be better if I had a mascot. To be perfectly honest, it’s been very inconvenient. I’ve spent a lot of time this week looking for [the costume] when I should be worrying about other things leading up to the game."

The police are investigating the crime but the team has announced that if the suit were returned they wouldn't press any charges. The 8 people with access to the room all deny involvement and there are no other leads for the police to follow at this time as there are no surveillance cameras in the arena.

With the playoffs just around the corner, the team is planning on breaking out an older, smellier version of the mascot costume if the nicer, newer version cannot be located. While hockey fans are notoriously a superstitious bunch, head coach Mario Durocher laughed off the suggestion that the missing mascot could affect his his players' concentration.

"You’re not serious? There could be [only] one person in the building and there would no impact on my players. There could be 10,000 people and there should be no impact on my players. So with a mascot or not, if there’s noise or not, we should be focused as a hockey team. As a player, you have to focus on the ice, on what you control."

Screaming Eagles fan Eddie Farrell took a dimmer approach to the situation, "We’re going into the playoffs, you don’t change horses now. I don’t think people want to see a new uniform coming out just before the playoffs. It’d be the same if the whole team suddenly had different jerseys. It won’t affect them [the players] at all. We’re still going to win, but if we lose, I guess we can blame the mascot."

[The Chronicle Herald]