Utah’s new National Hockey League team is beginning to compile a list of possible team names ahead of its inaugural season (not expansion) in the fall.
Clark Rasmussen of DetroitHockey.Net, the king of brand research, discovered two additional names that may have been trademarked, bringing the total to nine that have been registered so far:
Utah Blizzard
Utah Fury
Utah HC
Utah Hockey Club
Utah Ice
Utah Mammoth
Utah Outlaws
Utah Riptide
Utah Yetis
The team’s co-owner (and also co-owner of the NBA’s Utah Jazz), Ryan Smith, told Sportsnet’s 32 Thoughts podcast that he ultimately wants to let the fans decide on the final name through a tournament-style round.
„We have six or eight names that seem to be,“ he told the podcast. „We’ve hired Qualtrics to do this through the survey lens, get all the feedback, and line up the brackets the right way.“
Rasmussen’s post notes that while we currently have nine brand names, two of them are actually duplicates (Utah Hockey Club and Utah HC), bringing us down to eight. By excluding the teams without names (it felt good not to be in the rain), we are down to seven. Both scenarios fall within the range set by Smith of „six or eight.“
Speaking of scenarios, Smith mentioned that his „dream scenario“ involves overlapping elements between the Jazz jerseys and the new Utah NHL team uniforms.
„When you look at the mountains [Jazz] jersey, it naturally brings out a little color palette of fresh ice and blue skies, you see that,“ Smith said on the podcast. „In a dream scenario, there’s a Venn diagram where you have the Jazz and this team… where things could overlap.“
„You have to give the teams a little leeway to come out and do special things that aren’t part of this diagram, but I think there can be a really cool symmetry, and I don’t think it has to be like Pittsburgh or anything else where everything is the exact same color,“ said Smith.
As it stands, I’m not sure if I’m a fan of any of the possible names that have been announced so far. Yetis is okay, I guess? But the Colorado Avalanche has already used those Bigfoot images – is that an issue? Utah Blizzard might work from Smith’s perspective as it lends itself easily to the mountain imagery he mentioned and the double „Z“ can serve as a link to the „Jazz.“
We’ll keep an eye on this, but I suggest following Clark on Twitter/@detroithockey96 for the latest on this.