Every now and then I keep asking myself why on earth the hockey team of Pittsburgh decided to call themselves the Penguins. I have tried to find a clever answer, but no. At least to me, the answer to the above question remains a mystery. Do the Penguins and the penguin have anything in common at all?

Comparing these two "phenomena", one thing that automatically springs to my mind is the word ice. Ice really is a thing that unites the famous American hockey team and the well-known flightless, aquatic bird. The players in Pittsburgh Penguins spend, as we all should know, a considerable amount of their lifetimes on the ice, skating. And the real penguin lives mostly in icy areas around and in Antarctica. (the real penguin can though feel proud of not having to do with artificial ice all the time, as they stroll around on the thousands of years old ice of Antarctica. Neither do their natural ice have to be prepared by zambonis.). The thing is that real penguins enjoy themselves, as much on ice as in "melted ice", commonly known as water. I’m not accusing the players of the Pens for not being able to swim, but I hardly believe e.g. Jaromir Jagr would win against a real penguin in swimming if they competed!

Comparing the size of an average Pittsburgh Penguins hockey player to an average king penguin (the species the Pens pretend to be...), you’ll find out that there hardly isn’t any similarity at all. The average hockey player is about 1.80-1.90 m tall (around 6"), and they weigh about 90 kg (200lbs). On the other hand, an average king penguin is about 91-97 cm (36-38 inches) tall and has got a maximum weight that doesn’t even come near to what for instance the tiniest Penser weighs. Another thing worth mentioning is that an important part of the king penguin body consists of fat, usable in very cold weather. Contrary to that, a hockey player normally wants to gain muscles and do away with his fat.The city of Pittsburgh is situated in northern USA, so snow falling isn’t that rare. But snow falling doesn’t have to mean you live in a place where penguins would like to live in. The truth is that there have never ever been any penguins in North America, and therefore not in Pittsburgh. Penguins only live in Antarctica and the southernmost areas of Australia, Africa and South America, but as mentioned before, never ever in earth’s history in the US! I would understand if Pittsburgh named their hockey team e.g. the Pittsburgh Pumas, or something like that. In my opinion, the Penguins is a name that only would fit a hockey team based near a weather observatory station in the middle of our ice-cold southernmost continent, but not for a city where the inhabitants can walk around in t-shirts in summertime. =)