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Songs to Accompany an Air Horn

The time had finally come for the Washington Capitals to take a bold step. Fueled by their captain, Alex Ovechkin, the Capitals assembled a fast, young, aggressive team that scored often this season.

Only one element was missing from their raucous home games: an original goal song.

“It was like, ‘Why shouldn’t this team, at this point in time, have their own thing?’ ” said Elliot Segal, the morning host on WWDC-FM, the Washington rock station known as DC101 that held a contest this winter to select the song.

Not long after N.H.L. teams started to turn away from live organ music during games and began using recorded music, playing a song after a home team goal became commonplace. Often, the song was “Rock and Roll, Part 2,” or “Hey,” released by Gary Glitter in 1972. It was good for fans to chant along.

Some teams had their own goal songs. In 1976, the Hartford Whalers adopted a catchy theme, “Brass Bonanza,” which a team official found in a record library. “Brass Bonanza” was used as a goal song to add to the atmosphere — and wound up annoying opponents.

During the 1994-95 lockout, the Rangers, whom the team spokesman Brendan McIntyre said were looking for a unique song, and not one heard on the radio, turned it up a notch by commissioning “Slapshot,” or “The Rangers Goal Song,” a tune of conquest and triumph that remains the gold standard. (Unfortunately for the Rangers, who failed to qualify for the playoffs, “Slapshot” will not be played at Madison Square Garden again until next season.)

Some teams were more creative than others, and the songs tended to be hard rock. Three years ago, the Philadelphia Flyers had a local punk-rock group, the Boils, record several songs. One of them, “The Orange and the Black,” became the team’s victory song. It was played Sunday after the Flyers beat the Rangers to make the playoffs.

Anthony Gioia, the Flyers’ game-presentation director, said, “The intended effect was to expose our fans to a song in which they can identify with the team, recognize immediately and energize.”

The Caps, who used to punctuate goals with only a siren, had the same idea. Segal said that songs entered in the contest could not be about any particular player, including Ovechkin, or any particular season. The Capitals wanted to start a tradition.

The team and its fans, who voted on the station’s Web site, found what they were looking for in “Rock the Red,” written and performed by Sandbox Kings, an indie rock group from Arlington, Va. Capitals fans, many of whom wear red shirts to games at Verizon Center, participate by yelling “Hey!” and “Rock the Red.”

“The reaction was far more favorable than I expected,” said Segal, who was familiar with the Rangers’ song because he worked at WHTZ-FM, Z100, in New York.

When Glitter, a British rocker whose real name is Paul Francis Gadd, received a three-year prison sentence for child molestation in 2006, “Rock and Roll, Part 2” fell out of favor with some N.H.L. teams, including the Islanders, the Vancouver Canucks, the Calgary Flames, the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Minnesota Wild. The N.F.L. banned the song from its stadiums.

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The sound of a goal being scored in the N.H.L. begins with a surging cheer from the crowd and ends with a carefully selected recording of music.Credit...Christian Petersen/Getty Images

But after a one-year hiatus, the San Jose Sharks resumed playing it; they used an instrumental version, said Scott Emmert, a team spokesman.

In a recent interview, Tim Beach, the Islanders’ vice president for operations, said, “We just asked ourselves, ‘Can the Islanders get by in life without putting money in the pockets of some pedophile?’ ”

When the Islanders scored, Beach’s game-operations crew used to blast an Army surplus horn, play 20 seconds of “Rock and Roll, Part 2,” then add several recorded “woos” that people could chant. As Beach said, the tradition took on a life of its own.

Last season, the Islanders tried six or seven other goal songs, none of which seemed to catch on, probably because the team hardly scored and had the worst record in the league.

Beach said: “People were resistant to change. The team was losing, and at the end of the day, it just didn’t jell.”

Late last season and early this season, the Islanders played an edited version of “Burn It to the Ground” by Nickelback. It was better, Beach said, but not a keeper.

So the Islanders began hunting for another goal song. Ten were narrowed to five in a poll of team executives, then to three that were put up for a vote on the team’s Web site. “Bro Hymn,” a hard rock song by Pennywise also used by the Anaheim Ducks, was selected. Islanders fans liked it.

“Sometimes, it’s not different taking the same approach to a hockey game as to being a D.J. at a wedding,” Beach said.

Subtly, some teams have been moving toward playing goal songs for individual players. After the Detroit Red Wings score their first goal at a home game, they always play “Hey Hey Hockeytown,” written for the team by an advertising agency in 1996. But then they play different goal songs.

When Brian Rafalski scores, “Jump Around” is played because he is an alumnus of the University of Wisconsin, where the song is popular at games. “Newfie Stomp” is played after a goal by Dan Cleary, a native of Newfoundland. When Pavel Datsyuk scores, the team spokesman John Hahn said, the Red Wings play a song by Pitbull because Datsyuk likes the rapper.

But some standards stick. When the St. Louis Blues score, the organist still belts out the time-tested “When the Blues Go Marching In,” to the tune of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” The Los Angeles Kings have played a cut of Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” since 1989.

The Whalers moved to North Carolina in 1997 and became the Hurricanes. But, if you listen closely, “Brass Bonanza” lives on in the N.H.L.

Dieter Ruehle, the organist and D.J. at Staples Center, said, “I’ll still play a few bars of it on the organ when Carolina comes to L.A.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section SP, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: Songs to Accompany An Air Horn. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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