Minor League Hockey League Apologizes For Inadvertently Referencing Capital Riot To Hype Throwback Night

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The ECHL affiliate for the New York Rangers is gearing up to host a Throwback Night on January 6th, but the hockey team has been forced to issue an apology after accidentally referencing an infamous event that unfolded on that date a few years ago.

The Cincinnati Cyclones have a history that stretches back to 1990, and earlier this week, the team posted a video of forward Justin Vaive rocking an old-school uniform along with the caption “We don’t care, we paint the town red (on January 6th).”

Cincinnati Cyclones

Now, if you’re a normal person who keeps tabs on pop culture and isn’t Terminally Online, you probably understood the Cyclones were simply referencing the Doja Cat song “Paint the Town Red” to promote a Throwback Night where jerseys of that color will take center stage.

With that said, plenty of people couldn’t ignore the fact that January 6th just so happened to be the day an angry mob stormed the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. in 2021 in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying the results of the election (which left a number of the police officers tasked with defending the building beaten and bloodied).

Now, I don’t think there are any reasonable people who genuinely believe the Cyclones were purposefully referencing that particular incident, but there were still plenty of observers online who couldn’t stop themselves from pointing out the unfortunate coincidence.

The team subsequently decided to take the “offending” post down before issuing an apology where it stated, “The night and these jerseys are in no way a political statement.”

Again, anyone with a brain should have realized that was the case, so while it’s kind of absurd the Cyclones had to resort to this, I guess you can never be too cautious in this day and age.