The American Hockey League’s Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins debuted an out-of-this-world alternate identity over the weekend that was inspired by a local tale of extraterrestrial mystery.
For their game on Friday, April 11, against the Springfield Thunderbirds, the Penguins took to the ice as the Carbondale UFOs, complete with special jerseys that featured flying saucers on the front.
The jerseys were inspired by the tale of a possible UFO crash landing in Carbondale, Pennsylvania—15 miles northeast of Scranton—on an autumn night in 1974 when, according to the Penguins, “three high school-age boys witnessed a fiery ball of light streak across the sky. With velocity and flare, its trajectory carried the anomaly directly into Russell Pond in Carbondale. The boys quickly investigated the “crash site”, and while they did not see a molten meteor or the wreckage of a hobbled spacecraft, they did see an unmistakable glow coming from the pond’s depths.”
The boys alerted the police, who were dumbfounded. “Newspaper reports at the time even mentioned one of the officers was so taken aback that he discharged his weapon at the pond,” the Penguins’ website reads. When a team of divers finally entered the pond a few days later, they discovered the source of the glow: an old miner’s lantern.
But in the 50 years since, rumours continue to swirl around Carbondale. Some people insist they saw federal government agents haul a wide, covered object away from the pond on a flatbed truck, and that the lantern was planted in the pond “as a convenient explanation.”
While the truth may still be out there, the Penguins honoured this bit of local folklore with their jerseys on Friday. The base of the jersey was white, with a triangular crest on the front featuring a purple flying saucer with a neon green emanating from the bottom. The shoulders were neon green with a purple outline and tonal ellipses radiating out from the neck. The sleeves had a neon green block bordered in purple at the forearms and green-and-purple striping that angled upward higher up, with the player numbers placed in between. Horizontal green and purple stripes ran around the waist.
Each shoulder housed a secondary logo of a miner’s lantern with a green alien head inside and the words “I BELIEVE” inscribed on the bottom.
On the back, player numbers were set in a space-age purple font with a neon green outline. Names were white on a contrasting purple nameplate, also with a neon green outline.
The socks were white with neon green and purple striping that matched the jersey waist. The Penguins paired the UFOs jerseys with their usual yellow helmets and black pants with yellow and white striping down the sides.
This was the third installment of the Penguins’ Community Night series, which highlights some of the smaller communities in Northeast Pennsylvania. In 2022-23, they played a game as the Old Forge Pizzas, while in 2023-24, they took to the ice as the Pittston Tomatoes.
