if they are all on the same team it certainly
makes it easy for the announcer.

on another matter what do they do with
the octopi that people come to the
red wings games with to throw on the ice
for a hat trick, when there isnt any
hat trick? do they take they home?

googled it myself and understand it is not
for hat trick but for a big red wings win

Laura Wattenberg talked about this. (She doesn't suggest any reasons why the name had that distribution, sadly.)

I was in a Catholic prep school with a bunch of Irish Americans. Some of the guys get tall. Italians and Poles, not so often. And they do pretty well in most areas of the country, like Catholics in general have these last few decades; hockey's an expensive sport, hence mostly for white suburbanites.