If The Bruins Had Gone With ‘Pooh Bear’ Reverse Retro, Would Sinden Pay Again?

Did former Boston Bruins Coach, General Manager, and Team President Harry Sinden purchase the rights to the logo that came to be known as ‘The Pooh Bear’ from a Florida Golf course? If the Bruins used that logo for their Reverse Retro, would Sinden have had to fork over more money?

In the weeks leading up to the Boston Bruins Reverse Retro jersey reveal on Monday, there was speculation that the Bruins might be basing their design on the ‘Pooh Bear’ logo that the team used as it’s third or alternate jersey from the 1995-96 season until the 2005-06 season.

BEHOLD….THE REVERSE POOH pic.twitter.com/uRCXyb7mYC

— Pete Blackburn (@PeteBlackburn) October 22, 2020

Thankfully, at least in the humble opinion of this puck scribe, the Boston Bruins did not go with that design and pay homage to a logo that takes the franchise back to a frustrating decade of mediocrity. Instead, the Bruins ‘Reverse Retro’ honored the era just prior to that the successful teams that Sinden built in the late eighties and early nineties.

A legendary remix.#ReverseRetro pre-sale starts in TWO hours on https://t.co/2FAwOsQXo6!

More details ➡️ https://t.co/2Rc78pZins pic.twitter.com/mPIAA4pEgv

— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) November 16, 2020

As longtime NHL play-by-play man for TSN Gord Miller recalled on TSN 690 recently, the Bruins players forced to wear ‘The Pooh Bear’ were not thrilled to do so.

“I remember [former Bruins goalie], Craig Billington telling me when he went to play for Boston and they had this awful third logo,” Miller recalled. “And. …and there’s a funny story behind it but, Craig looked at me and said ‘I’m finally playing for an Original 6 team and I got ‘Winnie The Pooh’ on my jersey.'”

If the Bruins had decided to use the ‘Pooh Bear’ logo for the Reverse Retro, Sinden may have had to pay a Florida Golf Club a much more expensive rights fee than the one Miller claims he did for the original ‘Pooh Bear’ logo.

“So, it turns out, that’s the logo from the Bear Lakes Golf Course in Florida that Harry Sinden’s a member at,” Miller explained. “Instead of paying a designer to do the third logo, he just paid the golf course a couple grand and then used that.”