Gritty is the official mascot for the Philadelphia Flyers National Hockey League (NHL) team. He is a furry orange creature with googly eyes who wears Flyers gear. Gritty has been compared to the Phillie Phanatic, the mascot for the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team. He was created by Brian Allen of Flyland Designs with help from David Raymond, the first man to portray the Phillie Phanatic. Gritty was introduced on September 24, 2018. According to his official biography, Gritty emerged after construction at the Wells Fargo Center, the Flyers' home arena, disturbed his secret hideout. Within the months following his debut, Gritty became an internet sensation and made appearances on several talk shows. Since his creation, he has been met with increasingly positive reviews. Creation Prior to the 2018–19 NHL season, the only two National Hockey League teams without an official mascot were the Philadelphia Flyers and the New York Rangers. The Flyers' previous mascot, Slapshot, lasted only for the 1976–77 season. In 1995, the Washington Capitals introduced their own Slapshot, named by fifth-grade student Stephanie Williams in a contest. The impetus behind Gritty's creation started when the Flyers' marketing department attended the mascot events at the 2016 NHL All-Star Game in Nashville, Tennessee, and realized that they were missing out on all the marketing and community outreach programs that the league's mascots were generating for their respective teams. The Flyers then commissioned Brian Allen of Flyland Designs in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, to design Gritty in August 2018. David Raymond, who portrayed the Phillie Phanatic, consulted on Gritty's creation. The Flyers organization wanted Gritty to have a rather intimidating appearance, as "someone you'd high-five but not hug" according to Allen. Career Gritty made his debut on September 24, 2018, and appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon several days later. Gritty was active on social media from his debut: his odd appearance and stunts on Twitter, such as seeming to threaten the mascot of the Pittsburgh Penguins and recreating Kim Kardashian's "Break the Internet" photograph, contributed to his rise in infamy. Within days, Gritty's Twitter account had more followers than any other NHL mascot. In his first on-ice appearance, Gritty fell while firing T-shirts into the crowd from a T-shirt cannon. In his second appearance on ice, Gritty body-checked contestants in a goalie race during an intermission and shot a Flyers staff member with a T-shirt cannon. On October 13, 2019,