It’s full speed ahead for the West Kent Steamers, the newest entry into the Maritime Hockey League.
The Steamers — who are based in the town of Buctouche, New Brunswick — unveiled their logos in early June ahead of their first season in the MHL, a Junior A hockey league with teams in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.
The primary logo shows a steam-powered boat with white and red stripes and a yellow star racing along above the team’s wordmark. A ship’s wheel appears underneath the wordmark.
“A steamer is defined as a boat or ship that moves by steam power, also called a steamboat,” the team explains in a press release from May announcing the winner of their name-the-team contest. “Historically, in Grand-Bouctouche, steamboats were used to import and export products, and transport citizens and tourists to other areas of the province and North America.” As the winner of the contest said in their entry, men who didn’t work in the forests of New Brunswick cutting down trees would wait on the wharf so they could earn money loading the lumber onto steamboats.
The logo that will appear on the team’s jerseys isolates the boat from the primary logo and adds white and grey waves underneath.
The Steamers also have the wordmark on its own at its disposal. The jerseys will also have a shoulder patch with an S wrapped around an anchor in front of a ship’s wheel.
The West Kent Steamers open their 2023-24 MHL regular season with a visit to the Edmunston Blizzard on Friday, September 15. Their home opener at the J.K. Irving Centre in Buctouche is two days later against the Grand Falls Rapids.