14 Potential Names Eliminated for Utah’s NHL Team, Six Remain

And then there were six.

The Smith Entertainment Group released round number two upon fans of the newest team in the National Hockey League, just today, allowing fans to get in and select one of six remaining names.

The original vote commenced on May 8th, encouraging fans to select 4 options of the 20 presented monikers.

The votes closed on May 22nd and had tallied a total of 520,000 individual fan submissions, leading us to todays results.

The six names remaining are as follows:

Utah Mammoth

Utah Yeti

Utah Outlaws

Utah Venom

Utah Blizzard

Utah Hockey Club

You can select your #1 option right here:

Yeti, Mammoth and Outlaws came as a shock to absolutely nobody.

That’s the big 3 when it comes to the most likely mascot to be pinned down.

One of those three feels inevitable.

Blizzard, and to a large extent, Venom and the Hockey Club left fans with a much more puzzled stance on the voting hierarchy.

Not one to judge the process myself I can say, I know few individuals who actively selected “Hockey Club” or even “Venom” as a top 4 selection.

Of these names, all were some of the first trademarked, and some of the first that fans were able to heavily discuss.

The Venom and Hockey Club bandwagon certainly exist, but are there enough them to squeeze these names past others that fans had taken a liking too after the initial reveal of 20?

Utah Hockey Club is the image the team will use for the 2024-2025 season as a temporary placeholder whilst the true identity is decided and worked on.

It wouldn’t be shocking to leave it as an option in case fans take a liking to it, I suppose?

Regardless, should we mourn any of the names removed from the polls?

It’s hard to say, as it’s all personal opinion, for myself my top 3 made the next cut, but for others they may be distraught over the exclusion of “Caribou”.

The 14 that fell by the wayside are:

Swarm

Squall

Powder

Hive

Mountaineers

Ice

Glaciers

Fury

Frost

Freeze

Caribou

Canyons

Blast

Black Diamonds

Now time for some opinions of my own accord.

The chances of someone losing sleep over the loss of “Blast” or “Fury” is pretty slim.

The idea that a hockey team must be “winter” themed is grand but too much of a focal point for a lot of these eliminated concepts.

Ice, Squall, Frost, Freeze and Powder all sound directly ripped from a Pokémon game, and don’t convey anything that you couldn’t depict with the Mammoth, Yeti and Blizzard advancing.

Canyons is something.

Like how does one depict a sports team as a “canyon”?

Caribou is a cute concept and winter themed. It doesn’t have the tenacity of Yeti or the Utah ties such as Mammoth. Both which cover the “winter themed beast” aspect.

The bee themed aspects of Hive and Swarm were popular additions for the beehive state, Swarm more so.

Swarm is the first name here that may come as a shock that it was eliminated. It fit the Utah identity, it fit with a hockey teams tenacity, and could have provided some cool branding concepts

Mountaineers was a late addition to the fight, but a welcome one.

Evident by the newest Utah Jazz uniforms rolling out over the next two years, Utah and its fans love embracing that mountain identity.

It covers the whole state from Jazz fans, BYU, Utah State and the U of U. They all love to be known as the team with the mountains.

Maybe having both Utah and BYU in the same conference as West Virginia did some damage to how many selected the “Mountaineers” moniker.

The biggest omission then all seems like the “Black Diamonds”.

This was a heavy hitter early on and a prominently discussed among names like Outlaws and Yeti.

Black Diamonds, a ski term signaling a run for only the most advanced Skiers, addressed the Utah aspect, home of the “greatest snow on earth”.

Many who don’t hit the slopes may have been confused by the option on their poll or simply uninterested in a nonphysical mascot

Either way, these names are in the past, spilt milk if you will, and the future resides in six names that you can vote on now.