The NHL Gets An Official Angry Birds Mascot. Of Course It Does.

While the rest of the Angry Birds spend their days desperately trying to recover their stolen young from their piggy adversaries, one has apparently decided he’d rather skip off to North America to play ice hockey. NHL HockeyBird is a bit of a dick.

I’m sure his devil-may-care attitude will play well in NHL Stadium Series venues. He’ll appear on jumbo screens to play mini-games, harnessing state-of-the-art sound sensing technology that translates the roar of the crowd into a performance-enhancing drug. It’s voice-activation on a massive scale.

“NHL HockeyBird shares many of the NHL values: passion, toughness, courage, sacrifice, honor, teamwork, respect, and commitment”, said Peter Vesterbacka, CMO of Rovio Entertainment via official press release. “NHL HockeyBird likes to play hard and fair, and has a courageous, never-give-up attitude – something we call ‘sisu’ up here in Finland.”

Sure, those sounds like NHL player qualities. Why not? Maybe don’t call them “Sisu” though, if you value your teeth.

HockeyBird will be making his stadium debut tomorrow at the Kings-Ducks game in Los Angeles, followed by appearances in New York January 26 and 29, Chicago March 1, and Vancouver on March 2. During the month of February he’ll be busy posing for the avalanche of marketing tie-ins and souvenir collectibles planned to coincide with the irresponsible chasing of his hockey dream.