The Washington Capitals are beginning to celebrate their 50th year of existence and part of that is delving into how the franchise came to be.
Capitals’ senior writer Mike Vogel wrote an article on how the Capitals chose their name and we found out something interesting. A portion of the fanbase in the ’70s wanted the Capitals to be the Pandas.
When then Capitals’ owner Abe Pollin was trying to round out the details of his new NHL baby, he was stuck on one thing, its name. In a loss of ideas, and an attempt to excite his city even more for their new organization, Pollin made the unorthodox decision to open naming up to the fans of the team.
“We have an NHL team. We have a place to play,” Pollin told the Washington Post in January of 1974. “What we don’t have is a name.”
The contest was open to anyone except the Capital Centre staff and their families, and ran from January 2nd to 17th — just months before the team’s debut. The reward was two season tickets to all Capital Centre NHL games for their inaugural 1974-75 season. One person was to be chosen, so if multiple people submitted the same name, their names would be pulled out of a hat. Pollin would pick the random winner himself.
The contest produced over 12,000 responses, all of which were viewed by Pollin and his wife. One enthusiastic fan even sent in 102 postcards containing 102 different names. The postcards were tallied after one week and landed at 4,500 submissions, the most popular being the “Comets,” which had 156 responses. Beyond that, fans voted 100 times for “Pandas,” 57 for “Blades,” and 54 for “Ice Caps,” few of which were seriously considered by Pollin. Our favorite responses included the “Watergate Bugs” and the “Dum Dum’s.”
While the “Pandas” may seem like an odd name choice for a hockey team, the giant bear is no stranger to DC. Giant pandas joined the national zoo in 1972, just two years before the Capitals’ inaugural year. A gift to Patricia Nixon from Chinese Premier Enlai, two giant pandas were sent to the zoo in an effort to breed and help save the species, causing a “panda-monium” in the city.
Since 1972, the National Zoo has played host to seven panda cubs, successfully sending three pandas back to China, as part of the agreement that they would be returned by the age of four. In November of 2023, all of the Smithsonian’s pandas were returned to China. Their loan from the Chinese government expired and was not re-signed. The contract had been re-signed three times since 2000. America’s only pandas now reside at the Atlanta Zoo.
Before their sendoff, the Capitals embraced the National Zoo pandas who were gifted pucks to play with in 2021.
Giant panda cub Xiao Qi Ji and @capitals? 🐼 Slapshot 🏒 straight to the heart. ❤️ Sending love to D.C. and our hometown team as they start their season tonight. Go Caps! #ALLCAPS #PandaStory pic.twitter.com/Ipg5GCtWfu
— National Zoo (@NationalZoo) January 14, 2021
Ultimately, Pollin went in another direction as both he and his wife Irene did not like the name. On January 21, 1974, the inaugural owner finally decided on “Capitals” while on a flight to Seattle to watch the NBA All-Star game.
Much consideration went into the name including something that would match Pollin’s desired color scheme of red, white and blue. Even pressure from local journalists to make it a name that could be shortened to optimize page space in newspapers was considered too.
“Most headline writers in sports prefer a sport name or a truncated one,” Washington Post writer Bob Addie wrote. “In New York City, for instance, the New York City Daily News makes it almost a must, because of its tabloid size, that its sports teams have abbreviated names to fit the limited page. Thus we gave the Mets, Jets, and Nets… .”
The award was given to Mrs. Ruth Stolarick of Alexandria, Virginia. Stolarick was one of 88 people to submit Capitals, but was the lucky winner of the very official name pulling, which took place 35,000 feet in the air.
The team had no head coach until May of that year and no players until June. During the season, the Capitals posted a record of 8-67-9 (the worst NHL record ever as by points percentage), but at least we got our beloved “Let’s Go Caps!”
