The NHL needs all the P.R. it can get and it took a blunder by a U.S. Senate candidate to get it for them this week.

After the 2010 Winter Olympics hockey ratings were sky-high thanks to an adrenaline filled 3-2 victory by Canada over the U.S. the league missed out on retaining a lot of that interest. With a potential rematch between U.S. Olympic goaltender and MVP of the tournament, Ryan Miller and Canada’s Sidney Crosby just days after the gold medal game, Miller was benched for rest and sat out the game.

The following week, Crosby, for reasons no one in marketing can figure, turned down an offer to do the Top Ten on the David Letterman Show.

Jump to this week when Marc Delphine who is running for a U.S. Senate seat in Oregon accepted a ‘free’ logo from a volunteer and placed it on his website.

Turns out the logo is a trademarked piece belonging to the NHL Columbus Blue Jackets. The silver star wrapped in a star-spangled banner, his designer said, evoked the letter ‘D’ for branding purposes.

Delphine thought the design was original but several people contacted him and advised him of the rip-off.

“They were all like, ‘What are you doing with their logo?’ and I was like, ‘I didn’t make the logo!’ and we pulled it immediately,” said Delphine, a Libertarian candidate. “I’m not interested in any kind of infringement. We don’t even need a logo.”

The current Blue Jackets logo is in the photo above and looks almost identical to the hockey one. It is just been flipped from left to right and the red circle synonymous with the Ohio state flag was removed.

“I don’t know if you know anything about Libertarian candidates, but they typically don’t have a lot of money coming in. I was thinking this was so nice, but it was too good to be true,” said Delphine.

Since discovering the rip-off, Delphine removed it from his site and said, “If anything, I hope this raises awareness for the Columbus Blue Jackets.”

Hopefully it does, Mr. Delphine because when it comes to P.R. and marketing, Gary Bettman and the NHL need all the help they can get.

©2010 Sports Climax™