Just wondering, purely hypothetical, and extraordinarily unlikely, but if we draft Erik Karlsson the center, and he ends up making the team one day, how do they work the jerseys? will they just both have to say Karlsson because there's no way to distinguish?
I don't think there are official rules for this scenario. I know you must have your full surname, but beyond that it's just convention to use the first letter of the name as a distinguisher.
I'd imagine the team would have on player's nameplate read "E Karlsson" while the other's read just "Karlsson" or something similar.
__________________ CanadianHockey________ __ __________Sens, Oilers, and Team Canada
He can still call everybody "the Ottawa player" or he can just continue to have his regular flashback seizures:
King Clancy passes to Erik Karlsson, Karlsson passes to Neil Brady, Neil Brady passes Petr Schastafarian, the Ottawa player passes to Andy Dackell and he scores. Mike Foligno with the go ahead goal against Reggie Lemelin.
Holy crap, it isn't that difficult to distinguish between two players with the same name. The teams even make it easier for you by giving them different numbered jerseys to wear. Unless you're Bob Cole, it should not be an issue.
Frank and Peter Mahovolich didn't have initials on their jerseys, and they were both forwards on the same team at the same time, and even played on the same line occasionally. Yet, somehow, everyone managed to get them straight, one was number 20 the other 27. Pretty ingenious of them to come up with that idea. Imagine that, different numbers!
Do today's fans have such an attention deficit disorder that they can be so easily confused because two players on a team have the same name? Has it really gotten that bad? Maybe they should just scrap the names altogether and just have numbers. Force the fans to pay more attention to the game being played instead of their smart phones.
At my old job we had two guys named Tyler with the exact same last name. We just called them Tyler1 and Tyler2. The good thing is that hockey players already have numbers attached to their name, so that wouldn't be an issue.
