Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images
Several members of the Seattle Kraken NHL team and their weird troll mascot Buoy recently went fly fishing in Anchorage, Alaska. They almost returned from the trip minus the mascot. That’s because a real-life grizzly bear, had it really wanted to, could have made Buoy his dinner.
The fly fishing excursion was part of hockey team’s partnership with the Bristol Bay Native Corporation. Each year, the Kraken and the Bristol Bay Native Corporation host a hockey camp hosted at the Anchorage Hockey Academy. Also this year, Kraken forward John Hayden, the team’s mascot Buoy, and several youth hockey coaches from the Kraken organization visited Katmai National Park to see if they could catch some Alaskan fish.
While they were waist-deep in the water, a couple of grizzly bears decided that they too would do a little fishing and one of the bears almost caught itself a hockey mascot.
The close encounter was caught on video
As video shared by the team shows, everyone in the water was made aware of the bear and quickly attempted to make their way to land. Unfortunately, a person wearing a very large blue mascot head seemed to draw the attention of one of the grizzly bears and for a moment, it appeared as if Buoy was going to be run down when the bear started to chase after him.
“That last little sprint, I was worried for you, Buoy,” John Hayden said after the coast was clear. “I want to blame it on Buoy. They were pretty interested in his whole look. We got out of it okay, but it was a close call.”
“TROLL NARROWLY ESCAPES BEAR ENCOUNTER,” the person running Buoy’s X (Twitter) account wrote. “*no trolls or bears were hurt in the making, always respect wildlife in their natural habitat.”
TROLL NARROWLY ESCAPES BEAR ENCOUNTER🤯🧌🐻
*no trolls or bears were hurt in the making, always respect wildlife in their natural habitat 🩶 pic.twitter.com/WBvw9RFkS0
— Buoy (@SEAbuoy) July 31, 2025
For those unfamiliar, as I wrote back in October of 2022 after Seattle revealed the team’s mascot, “The Kraken’s mascot is a troll – supposedly the ‘nephew’ of the Fremont Troll. (The Fremont Troll is a public sculpture in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle which was erected to deter the presence of homeless people and antisocial behavior under the bridge. Perfect for a hockey mascot, right?)”
Why the Kraken, named after a a terrifying 18th century sea monster, chose a troll that was created to deter homeless people from congregating under a bridge as their mascot is, to this day, still a mystery.
Fans had plenty of jokes
“If you see buoy and a bear in the wild, HELP THE BEAR!” one person wrote in the comments of the video on X.
“I was as rooting for the bear,” someone else wrote.
“Imagine getting mauled to death while dressed as a troll mascot,” read another comment.