The club kept its name when it crossed the border.

The Calgary Flames began life in the American South. English Wikipedia says that in December 1971 the National Hockey League granted expansion teams to Long Island and to Atlanta, partly to keep the rival World Hockey Association out of those cities, and that the Atlanta club began play in 1972. The two new teams became the New York Islanders and the Atlanta Flames.

The name came from the owner, and from a piece of local history. Wikipedia says the Atlanta owner, the property developer Tom Cousins, named the team the “Flames” after the fire started by General William Tecumseh Sherman’s troops during the American Civil War, when Atlanta was nearly destroyed. The club’s crest put the idea into a single letter: a flaming “A”. The uniforms set the pattern that later travelled north, with white jerseys carrying red shoulders and red and yellow stripes, and solid red jerseys with yellow and white stripes.

Eight seasons later the franchise changed hands. Wikipedia says Cousins was forced to sell the Flames in 1980 to avoid bankruptcy, and that with few serious local offers he accepted one from the Canadian entrepreneur Nelson Skalbania, who moved the team to Calgary. Skalbania kept the Flames name, judging that it would suit an oil town like Calgary, and the flaming “A” on the crest was replaced by a flaming “C”. A name chosen to recall a burning city in Georgia moved to Alberta without a change of a single word.

The new owner did not stay long. Wikipedia says Skalbania sold his interest in 1981, and that the Flames have been locally owned ever since, first by the Calgary Flames Limited Partnership and, from 2012, by Calgary Sports and Entertainment. The Flames have been in local hands since 1981 and part of Calgary Sports and Entertainment since 2012.

The arenas shaped the club’s early Calgary years. Wikipedia says the Flames played their first three seasons at the Stampede Corral and in 1983 moved into the Olympic Saddledome, built for the 1988 Winter Olympics. The arena is now the Scotiabank Saddledome. Looking to fill dates in the building, the Flames also agreed a lease with the junior Calgary Hitmen of the Western Hockey League when that club started in 1995, and bought the Hitmen two years later.

A red, gold and white uniform that kept coming home.

For its first years in Calgary the club changed very little on the ice. Wikipedia says the Calgary Flames’ original jerseys kept the basic design the team had worn in Atlanta: white jerseys with red shoulders and red and yellow stripes, and solid red jerseys with yellow and white stripes. The only real change was the letter in the middle of the crest, as the flaming “C” took the place of the “A”. Three colours and one mark carried the club through the 1980s.

A major addition came at the end of the 1990s. Wikipedia says that in 1998, to celebrate the “Year of the Cowboy”, the Flames introduced a third jersey, featuring a flaming horse logo on a black background. The fire-breathing horse head came to be known by a nickname: “Blasty”. Two years later the black jersey became the club’s road uniform, and the home jersey was updated with the same V-style striping on the arms and waist. In 2003, when the NHL adopted coloured jerseys for home teams, the black design moved back to third-jersey status.

Blasty was not universally liked. Global News reported on 16 November 2020 that the logo drew a lot of criticism when it was introduced, and quoted the Flames’ assistant general manager Craig Conroy recalling how much controversy the big jersey had caused. The same report said the Flames wore the original black jersey from 1998 to 2006 and that it served as the team’s home jersey for three years. Wikipedia says the flaming horse was retired in 2007.

That year the league moved to a new uniform cut. Wikipedia says that with the introduction of the Rbk Edge jersey in 2007 the Flames updated their look, replacing horizontal striping with vertical striping down the sides, and added the flags of Alberta and Canada as shoulder patches to honour the team’s heritage.

Outdoor games gave the designers room to look further back. For the 2011 Heritage Classic, Wikipedia says, the Flames wore uniforms inspired by the Calgary Tigers, the city’s professional hockey team of the 1920s, adapting the Tigers’ black and gold to darker shades of the Flames’ own colours: maroon and burnt yellow, with a yellow stripe across the chest, alternating stripes on the sleeves, and a cream-coloured flaming C and pants for a vintage look. In 2013 a Western-inspired third jersey arrived, with a script “Calgary” in black across the front and black shoulders cut in points to echo cowboy wear; it was used until the 2015–16 season. For the 2019 Heritage Classic against the Winnipeg Jets at Mosaic Stadium in Regina, the Flames brought back their original white uniform in a modern cut.

Design and documentation.

When a new club needs a name, the choice is sometimes handed partly to the public. A shortlist of candidates is published, supporters vote or submit ideas, and the final pick is announced at an event built for the reveal. Some clubs also play a first season under a placeholder: a city name with a plain word such as “club” or “team” after it, worn on a simple interim crest while the permanent identity is still being drawn. That gap gives designers time to test colours, wordmarks and secondary marks before the full set is fixed.

Military and historical references are another long-running source for sports marks. Flags, stars, period uniforms, cannons and regional history can give a crest a story that points to the place rather than to the game itself, and the details of those references often reappear in alternate jerseys and shoulder patches. Arenas add a further layer. A horn, a siren, a cannon blast or a particular song after a goal can become as recognisable as any logo, and those rituals are often written into how a club presents itself on match nights, in broadcasts and on merchandise.

The 1980s look became the main look again, and Blasty came back.

The change that followed was a return. CBC News reported on 8 October 2020, in a story by Pamela Fieber, that the Flames would switch back full-time to the “retro” jerseys of the 1980s as part of the club’s 40th season in Calgary. The report described the home jersey as bright red with yellow and white stripes around the waist and a white flaming “C”, and the away jersey as white with red shoulders and a red flaming “C”. The uniform historian Chris Creamer, author of Fabric of the Game, told the CBC programme Calgary Eyeopener that in the years since the design returned as a throwback, fans had made it clear that this was the look they wanted. He placed the move within a wider swing back to bright colours across sport, citing the Buffalo Sabres, the Ottawa Senators and the Edmonton Oilers’ return to royal blue and orange. Wikipedia adds that the black-trimmed red uniforms of the previous era were kept for one more season as an alternate and then retired.

The horse returned at the same time. Global News reported on 16 November 2020 that the Flames had revealed the return of the fire-breathing horse-head logo as part of the NHL’s Reverse Retro series. Brent Gibbs, director of retail at Calgary Sports and Entertainment, told the outlet that the striping was a little different and that the Cs on the shoulders were now white instead of red, with black gloves and 1990s-style pant striping completing the set. The report said that in the years since the logo left the jerseys it had built a following among younger fans who associated it with their first NHL games.

Wikipedia says that in 2022 the black Blasty uniform returned as a regular alternate, now with sublimated flame marks on the sleeves. The same year a second Reverse Retro jersey took the 1994–2000 uniform and set it on a black base. For the 2023 Heritage Classic the Flames wore cream uniforms inspired by the Calgary Stampeders hockey teams of the 1950s and 1960s, with a red roundel carrying the full team name around the flaming C; yellow appeared only in the roundel.

Outside the rink, the club’s identity extends to a dog and a colour. Wikipedia says the mascot Harvey the Hound was created in 1983 to serve both the Flames and the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League. Fans have their own uniform too: Wikipedia traces the “C of Red”, crowds dressed in red, to the 1986 playoffs against the Oilers, and says Winnipeg answered in 1987 with a white-clad “whiteout”.

For a design guide, the Calgary Flames show how a club can carry a name across a border unchanged, swap one letter on its crest, and still find that its fans want the oldest version of the uniform back. Compare it with Edmonton Oilers, the Alberta rival whose own retro return the Flames’ story echoes, and Winnipeg Jets, whose whiteout began as a reply to the C of Red. For this guide we use Flames red, flame gold and Blasty black with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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