Hockey arenas each have their own goal celebrations. There's usually a signature song, some encouragement for fan chants and perhaps a little salt in the eye for the road team that just gave up a goal.
The New York Sirens of the Professional Women's Hockey League have a unique goal song this season: "Gimme More," the 2007 Britney Spears dance track from her album "Blackout" that stands in stark contrast with the hard rock anthems blaring after NHL goals.
But what happens after the song plays makes every Sirens goal memorable and perhaps annoying for opponents:
"WEE-WOO!" "WEE-WOO!" "WEE-WOO, WEE-WOO, WEEEE-WOOOOOOO!"
The voice of Patrick Star from "SpongeBob SquarePants" sounds off after every made goal. More specifically, his voice from the Season 1 episode "Hall Monitor," in which he makes a panicked siren noise into a walkie-talkie, is now part of hockey's newest goal celebration.
Hearing it for the first time at the Sirens' home opener on Wednesday was a bit disorienting. It's loud. It's unexpected. It doesn't fit the cadence of a normal sporting event chant, starting slow and then quickly reaching a hectic pitch. It's something an opposing team would probably like to avoid hearing, let alone hear it four times as the Toronto Scepters did in their loss to New York at Newark's Prudential Center.
The Patrick Star idea came from the players.
This is the second PWHL season but the first in which the league's six teams have nicknames, after they played their inaugural season with only geographic monikers. New York was christened the "Sirens," which the league said was meant to evoke "New York City's one-of-a-kind energy, pace and rhythm," as well as the horn when a goal is scored. While the Sirens also share a name with a creature of Greek mythology, the PWHL said that's coincidental.
When the players returned for training camp as the Sirens, they decided to lean into the new name. At the end of practice on the ice, they would break their huddles by chanting "wee-woo, wee-woo!" before heading to the dressing room.
Check out the unique way the New York Sirens celebrate their goals in the PWHL.
The Sirens said that forward Kayla Vespa suggested that the "wee-woo!" make its way into the team's goal celebrations. Game operations and the content team ran with the idea.
According to Ivy Bourke, who spearheads fan experience and game activations for the Sirens, the team then had to figure out how fans would react. They played the sound effect at the Sirens' fan fest at Redd's Biergarten, located across from Prudential Center, where they play their home games.
The inception was a success. Not only did fans chant along with the "wee-woo!" at New York's 4-2 home-opening win over Toronto, some fans even brought "wee-woo!" signs that they held up during the goal celebration.
"I love it," defender Micah Zandee-Hart said. "We say it as a team all the time. When we cheer after practice, we're like 'wee-woo, wee-woo, wee-woo!'"
The Sirens said Zandee-Hart was an influence for using Britney Spears for their goal song.
"We picked it as a team. Originally the choice was 'Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!' by ABBA. But that's the Team Canada goal song, so we had to can that. Last season it was 'Back in the New York Groove.' But we were like, 'You know what? It's a new year, it's a new us.' So that was our next choice," said Zandee-Hart, who unfortunately also discovered that a midcareer Britney Spears bop now counts as an oldie.
"Some of the younger girls on our team had never heard it before," she said.
The players appreciated the fans' enthusiasm at the home opener, from the chants and cheers to the "wee-woos" after goals.
"We could hear the fans from the bench tonight, they were really loud. I would say they brought the energy and that really helped us through this win," Sirens forward Emmy Fecteau said.