By Bill Turianski ; twitter.com/billsportsmaps.
Billsportsmaps.com had its 15th year anniversary, on the 17th of August 2022. So I am posting a series of maps from the early days of this blog. This map was originally posted in October 2007.
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This is a map from my early days of sports maps, back in 1994. I was using a semi-transparent Bienfang watercolor-weight paper. First, I traced, onto that paper, the outlines from an enlarged photo-copied map (from an atlas). Then I used Swiss-made Caran d’Ache watercolor pencils, and plain graphite pencil. As you can see, back then, I was way more into the unbridled use of color and form, and less into accuracy. I can remember, halfway into the map, deciding to put in minor-league hockey clubs, only to realize (pre-Internet) that I had little chance of finding the logos for most of these small clubs. So I improvised: 1993 Ontario Hockey League trading cards I had helped (for logos of teams like the Sudbury Wolves, the Owen Sound Platers, and the Belleville Bulls); and for the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League teams, I just used their names alone. This map has teams from the National Hockey League; the American Hockey League; the aforementioned OHL and QMJHL; and the East Coast Hockey League. Minor league affiliations of all 16 of the 1993-94 AHL clubs are noted by small logos of their parent NHL clubs. (1993-94 AHL/NHL affiliations: Adirondack Red Wings/Detroit Red Wings; Albany River Rats/New Jersey Devils; Binghamton Rangers/New York Rangers; Cape Breton Oilers/Edmonton Oilers; Cornwall Aces/Quebec Nordiques; Fredericton Canadiens/Montreal Canadiens; Hamilton Canucks/Vancouver Canucks; Hershey Bears/Philadelphia Flyers; Moncton Hawks/Winnipeg Jets (I); Portland Pirates/Washington Capitals; Prince Edward Island Senators/Ottawa Senators; Providence Bruins/Boston Bruins; Rochester Amerks/Buffalo Sabres; Springfield Indians/Hartford Whalers; Saint John Flames/Calgary Flames; St. John’s Maple Leafs/Toronto Maple Leafs). After I scanned the drawing in 2007, I cleaned it up slightly, added team names in Arial font, and tightened some of the circles on the map. The player in the map’s legend is New York Ranger goalie Mike Richter, with his Statue of Liberty mask, and in his 1994 NHL All-Star Game uniform. {1994-97 NHL All-Star uniforms (nhluniforms.com).}
Hockey of the North Atlantic, circa 1994 [hand-drawn map]
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