How did each NHL team get its name? From Avalanche to Wild, the history of every nickname

Utah’s new NHL team has a major decision on its hands.

The naming of a hockey franchise can help define a team’s identity for generations. New owner Ryan Smith seems to inherently understand the importance of this decision, opting to take his time to ensure they get the name right. The plan is for the team to play its inaugural season in 2024-25 under the Utah banner, allowing them enough runway to properly choose a name and logo.

Last week, Smith said they would launch a March Madness-style bracket and allow hockey fans in Utah to vote amongst eight legitimate nicknames.

What Utah is doing here isn’t exactly unique.

Over the years, many NHL clubs have solicited opinions from fans to choose a nickname, launching a variety of name-the-team contests. Other teams landed on their nickname without public consultations, with the owner unilaterally selecting the name. We’ve also seen teams hang onto nicknames from old cities and even one that was generated by a backyard thunderstorm.

One Original Six team adopted its name thanks to slang from local sportswriters.

There have also been some colorful and entertaining suggestions that ended up on the cutting room floor.

Could you imagine the Buffalo Buzzing Bees? The Rocky Mountain Extreme? Or the Florida Block Busters?

With Utah pondering a handful of potential names for its team, here’s a look at how the 31 other NHL franchises ended up with their respective nicknames.

---

When Disney landed an NHL franchise in Southern California for the 1993-94 season, it was only natural that they named it after their wildly popular “Mighty Ducks” film that hit movie theatres in 1992. “If we’re a very good team, I think it will be a great name. If we’re a very bad team, it will be a bad name. But I welcome the puns,” Disney chairman Michael Eisner said when launching the name in March of 1993.

For the first 12 seasons of their existence, they were officially known as the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. In January of 2006, new team owners Henry and Susan Samueli announced the club would be rebranded as the Anaheim Ducks starting in the 2006-07 season.

Boston received an NHL franchise in 1924, when grocery store magnate Charles Adams secured the team. Adams insisted the colors of his hockey team match the same black and gold scheme from his supermarket chain. As for the actual nickname of the Bruins, there is some dispute around the origin. The first mention of the “Bruins” nickname appeared in the Nov. 14, 1924 edition of the Boston Globe newspaper. That article gave credit to Adams and his new head coach, Art Ross, for coming up with the name of the team.

But when the Bruins celebrated their centennial season in 2023-24, their official team website credited Adams’ secretary with actually coming up with the name “Bruins.” That article stated that Adams wanted his new hockey team to be named after “an untamed animal embodied with size, strength, agility, ferocity and cunning, while also in the color brown category.” And after a public contest to name the team did not yield any satisfactory results, Adams went with the submission from his secretary.

Shortly after purchasing an NHL franchise in Buffalo for the 1970-71 season, the Knox brothers launched a contest to name the new hockey club. According to an archived version of the club’s official website, they received more than 13,000 entries — including some unique ones such as the Buzzing Bees, the Mugwumps and the Herd.

In the end, four different people submitted the name Sabres — which appealed the most to the ownership group. Upon announcing the name of the team, the club wrote in a news release that “a sabre is renowned as a clean, sharp, decisive and penetrating weapon on offense, as well as a strong parrying weapon on defense.”

The Atlanta Flames relocated to Alberta in the spring of 1980 and the new owners in Calgary opted to keep the team’s nickname. The Flames originally got their name in Atlanta after the fires that torched much of Georgia during the Civil War. When the team relocated to Calgary, new owner Nelson Skalbania figured the Flames nickname would still work in the oil-rich province of Alberta.

The club simply changed its logo from a flaming “A” to a flaming “C” upon moving from Atlanta to Calgary.

Peter Karmanos wasted no time in renaming the Hartford Whalers when they relocated to North Carolina in the spring of 1997. On the day the move was announced, Karmanos revealed the team would be called the Carolina Hurricanes. There was no public contest to name the team.

Karmanos simply picked the name himself, choosing a powerful weather system that is known to cause havoc along the Atlantic coast.

The NHL awarded Chicago a franchise for the 1926-27 season with new owner Frederic McLaughlin in charge. McLaughlin purchased the WHL’s Portland Rosebuds, moved them to Chicago and renamed them. On Aug. 27, 1926, the Chicago Tribute newspaper announced the team would be called the Black Hawks.

“The name of the team was picked yesterday,” Chicago Tribune sports editor Don Maxwell wrote. “McLaughlin and his associates decided that the team should be called the Black Hawks. Uniforms will be symbolic of the name.”

McLaughlin chose the team name after serving in the U.S. Army’s 86th Infantry Division, which was nicknamed the Blackhawk Division after Sauk war leader Black Hawk. The division’s personnel were drawn from the Midwest, where the real Black Hawk had fought to defend his tribe and its land.

For the first 60 years of their existence, they were known as the Black Hawks — spelled as two different words. But in 1986, they officially switched to Blackhawks.

Team president Bill Wirtz explained the subtle change in the Feb. 11, 1986 edition of the Chicago Tribune.

”We’ve been trying to clear that up, gradually, the last few months. There’s been a lot of confusion, but there shouldn’t be,” Wirtz said. “It’s one word, always has been, on the official National Hockey League charter. Since the franchise was founded. Blackhawks. Period.”

Whereas the Carolina Hurricanes immediately chose their new name, it took almost three months for the NHL team in Colorado to get its nickname after relocating from Quebec City in the summer of 1995. When Denver originally had an NHL team from 1976-1982, they were called the Colorado Rockies. However, that name had since been adopted by the city’s Major League Baseball team in 1993.

There was a lot of speculation about the potential name, with the Denver Post going as far as reporting the relocated team from Quebec City would be called the Rocky Mountain Extreme. However, that name was met with a lot of resistance in the market.

In the end, fans were allowed to vote from a list of eight proposed names: Avalanche, Black Bears, Rapids, Cougars, Outlaws, Renegades, Storm and Wranglers.

“We received over 10,000 responses and Avalanche was slightly ahead of Black Bears and Cougars,” Colorado’s vice president of marketing Shawn Hunter said on Aug. 10, 1995.

Columbus didn’t enter the NHL until the 2000-01 season, but they had the team’s nickname lined up three years in advance.

On Nov. 7, 1997, the Columbus Dispatch reported the new NHL team would be known as the Blue Jackets. That name was chosen from the submissions gathered by more than 13,000 fans who participated in a name-the-team contest. The nickname Justice was reportedly the runner-up.

When the name was initially leaked, some with the franchise were keen on highlighting the insect connection to the Blue Jackets nickname.

“It’s an insect with an attitude. That’s the best way I can say it,” a source told the Columbus Dispatch.

However, the Blue Jackets name officially refers to Union soldiers of the Civil War. And when the franchise officially announced the name, they said it was “celebrating patriotism, pride and the rich Civil War history in the state of Ohio and, more specifically, the city of Columbus.”

The Minnesota North Stars relocated to Dallas for the 1993-94 season.

The club simply dropped “North” from its name and was immediately called the Dallas Stars. It was an easy and simple solution, considering that Texas is known as the “Lone Star State” and the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys are renowned for the giant star on their helmet.

In their first six seasons in the NHL, Detroit had two different team nicknames: the Cougars and Falcons.

But when James Norris purchased the team in 1932, he desired yet another rebranding. Norris wanted to pay homage to a Montreal-based amateur club he played for called the Winged Wheelers. He also thought it would be a natural tie-in for Detroit’s bustling automotive scene.

The Jan. 29, 1933 edition of the Detroit Free Press stated that Norris “himself drew the insignia of the auto wheel with wings sprouting from it on the Red Wing jerseys. He wanted to christen the team the Winged Wheelers. He accepted the word of friends, however, that the name was too clumsy.”

The Oilers joined the NHL in 1979-80, as part of a four-team merger with the WHA.

Original Edmonton owner Bill Hunter wrote in his autobiography that he chose the name Oilers for his hockey team to reflect the Alberta oil patch.

“Edmonton was blue-collar, hard-working town, and I wanted to give the team a name fans could identify with,” Hunter wrote.

Florida owner Wayne Huizenga held a contest to name his new hockey team in 1993. The team received 6,400 submissions and “Panthers” emerged as the clear winner.

The team’s official news release in April of 1993 stated that a panther’s traits are “easily translated to those of an exciting hockey player. It is powerful, aggressive, quick, lithe and very much alive in spirit; qualities we want our hockey playing Panthers to possess.”

When the Panthers chose their name, the team also pledged to raise awareness about Florida’s endangered state animal.

But Huizenga — who owned the popular Blockbuster video rental chain at the time — also toyed with the idea of naming his NHL team after his main corporate interest. And prior to settling on the Panthers, there were mockup logos and designs for an NHL team called the Florida Block Busters.

In May of 1966, owner Jack Kent Cooke launched a contest to name Los Angeles’ new NHL franchise.

The team received more than 7,500 entries — 31 of which had Kings submitted as the suggestion. A man named Harry J. Mullen — who had the earliest postmark on his submission of Kings — was deemed the contest winner. Mullen won a color TV, a portable radio and two season tickets for the Kings’ inaugural 1967-68 season in the NHL.

“We intend over the years to build a hockey dynasty and we wanted a name that would be properly representative of that,” Cooke told the L.A. Times.

After losing the North Stars in 1993, Minnesota landed another NHL franchise for the 2000-01 season. The new club launched a contest to name the team in 1998, receiving roughly 13,000 submissions from fans.

The franchise narrowed down the choices to six finalists: Freeze, Northern Lights, Blue Ox, White Bears, Voyageurs and Wild.

They ultimately settled on Wild, but not without some pushback. The Canadian Wildlife Federation claimed that its children’s magazine held the trademark rights on the name “Wild” — causing a brief legal ruckus that was eventually settled.

Montreal got its team name in 1909, when founding owner John Ambrose O’Brien chose the name Club de Hockey Canadien to appeal to the Francophone population in Montreal. The Montreal Wanderers already existed in the market and were more closely associated with Anglophone fans.

The team’s jerseys still sport something closely resembling the original logo, with a stylized letter “C” emblazoned with an “H” in the middle. Many fans mistakenly believe that “H” in the middle of their logo stands for Habitants — or the popular nickname “Habs” — that is often associated with the team. However, that “H” stands for hockey, as part of Club de Hockey Canadien.

The “Habs” nickname first appeared in a Le Devoir newspaper on Feb. 9, 1914.

In addition to the Habs, the Canadiens are also widely known as le Tricolore, les Glorieux, le Bleu Blanc et Rouge.

The inspiration for Nashville’s team name was actually uncovered decades before the city even landed an NHL franchise. During the construction of a large downtown skyscraper in 1971, workers unearthed the remains of a prehistoric tiger — including a massive saber tooth. The discovery took on legendary status in Nashville.

Before the team had a name, they unveiled their saber-tooth tiger logo on Sept. 25, 1997. Roughly six weeks later, the Tennessean newspaper reported the leading candidates for the new NHL team in Nashville were the Fury, the Edge and the Ice Tigers. However, on Nov. 13, 1997, team owner Craig Leipold announced the new team name would be the Predators — a nod to the discovery of that saber tooth almost 30 years earlier.

In 2016, those original bones and remains that were discovered at the site of the skyscraper in 1971 were moved to Bridgestone Arena, so hockey fans could see the artifact that helped inspire the team’s nickname.

When the Colorado Rockies relocated to New Jersey in the summer of 1982, a contest was held to help name the hockey club. More than 10,000 fans participated in the contest, with the Devils ultimately emerging as the winner, thanks to 25 percent of the popular vote.

The Jersey Devil is a mythical creature that is said to inhabit wooded areas in South Jersey for centuries. According to the July 1, 1982 edition of the Daily Record newspaper, Devils won the contest, edging out second-place finisher “Blades” and runners-up “Meadowlanders” and “Americans.”

On Feb. 16, 1972 — the same day they announced Bill Torrey would be their inaugural general manager — New York’s newest hockey team also revealed they would be known as the Islanders. The name was a simple acknowledgment that they would be playing their games on Long Island, and an easy way to separate themselves from the Rangers, who played their home games in midtown Manhattan.

It had been widely expected the new team would adopt the name “Ducks” — which was the nickname of a longstanding minor hockey league team that played games on Long Island from 1959-1973. In the end, however, they opted for the Islanders.

New York Rangers

In 1926, the New York Americans were the toast of Manhattan’s hockey scene. But Madison Square Garden president George “Tex” Rickard quickly realized the market could support another NHL franchise.

So he started a second team, which was owned and operated by MSG itself. With two teams in the market, sportswriters in New York started dubbing this new club as “Tex’s Rangers.”

Rickard loved the clever nickname and formally adopted it — printing the word “Rangers” in diagonal letters across the front of their jerseys.

When Ottawa returned to the NHL for the 1992-93 season, the franchise reincarnated the same name used by the Senators teams that captured four Stanley Cups in the 1920s.

The original Senators — who were considered the NHL’s first dynasty — were named because Ottawa was Canada’s capital city and home to federal institutions such as the Senate. But when the Senators returned after an almost 60-year hiatus in 1992, they introduced a Roman theme to their logo.

Upon securing an NHL franchise in 1966, the owners of the team in Philadelphia held a contest to name the club, with ballots available at a local grocery store chain.

More than 11,000 ballots were cast, with names such as the Liberty Bells, Lancers and Keystones said to be in consideration. However, team owner Ed Snider’s sister Phyllis suggested the team should be called the Flyers. That alliteration in the name appealed to the ownership group, so it stuck.

In the end, the roughly 100 fans who submitted the name “Flyers” were put into a draw for a grand prize winner to be chosen. The winning entry was credited to 9-year-old Pennsylvania resident Alec Stockard — who actually submitted his entry with the spelling of “Fliers.”  Stockard won season tickets and a 21-inch color TV.

The credit for the Penguins team name in 1966 belongs to Carol McGregor, wife of original team owner Jack McGregor.

“She liked the alliteration, the two Ps, Pittsburgh Penguins, like the Pittsburgh Pirates,” Jack McGregor told USA Today in 2017. “She thought it made sense because Penguins lived on snow and ice.”

The team held a naming contest with fans and on Feb. 9, 1967, the club announced Penguins had been selected from a field of more than 26,000 submissions. Roughly 700 of those submissions were for Penguins, with many believing it was a natural fit for a team that would be playing home games in an arena nicknamed “The Igloo.”

The new hockey team in San Jose didn’t limit suggestions for its NHL name to just the Bay Area in 1990. Instead, they held a worldwide contest to name the team, with the winning bid securing a pair of tickets to the 1991 NHL All-Star Game in Chicago. They received submissions from across the United States, Canada and even a suggestion from someone living in Italy.

The wide net yielded more than 2,300 suggestions for a team name. Some of the quirky ones included the likes of Rubber Puckies, Screaming Squids and Salty Dogs. One person even suggested calling them the Cansecos after Oakland A’s superstar Jose Canseco.

The most suggested nickname was the “Blades” — but focus groups determined that could have connotations to violence.

In the end, they settled on Sharks because the neighboring Pacific Ocean was home to seven different varieties of sharks and they had a ferocious component the marketing department found appealing.

“Sharks are relentless, determined, swift, agile, bright and fearless. We plan to build an organization that has all those qualities,” said Matt Levine, San Jose’s VP of marketing.

There was quite a bit of anticipation leading up to Seattle naming its NHL franchise in the summer of 2020.

And there was no shortage of options being tossed around by fans on social media. Names like the Emeralds, Metropolitans, Sockeyes, Steelheads and Totems all gained some traction.

But on July 23, 2020, the team announced it would be officially known as the Kraken.

Seattle’s logo and design pays homage to the Seattle Metropolitans, who were the first American-based team to capture the Stanley Cup in 1917.

“They are an eternal part of our city’s history and we pay tribute to them by wearing the ‘S.’ We will aspire to bring the Cup back to Seattle in their honor,” the team said of the new Kraken logo.

The club also chose a legendary sea monster as its name given its proximity to the water.

“A single tentacle stealthily rises from below, symbolizing the deep, dark waters of Puget Sound. How many are there? How deep do they go?” the club said in a statement explaining the name and logo. “The real peril lies in what you don’t see.”

The naming of the St. Louis Blues in 1967 was an easy decision for original team owner Sid Saloman Jr.

“The name of the team has to be the Blues,” said Salomon after being awarded the new franchise. “No matter where you go in town there’s singing, that’s the spirit of St. Louis.”

And it was natural to name them after the song “St. Louis Blues,” which was originally composed by W.C. Handy in 1914. The song was so popular Handy even performed it on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1949. Almost 20 years after that appearance, the NHL team in St. Louis opted for the Blues nickname — choosing a blue note on their sweater as a tribute to their musical name.

Prior to joining the NHL in the 1992-93 season, the Tampa Bay management team was considering a whole host of names for the franchise courtesy of a fan contest.

The finalists were said to include names such as Oceanics, Gators and Pelicans. But it turns out the whole thing was a futile exercise because inaugural general manager Phil Esposito knew the team name all along. Before they were even awarded an expansion franchise, Esposito was attending a barbecue at the home of a local Tampa lawyer named Bennie Lazzara in the summer of 1990.

As Esposito recalled to NHL.com in 2017, a massive thunderstorm rolled into the area.

“At that time, Lazzara’s mom, who was 84 or 85 at the time, she comes out the back door and she hears us talking about the name and says, ‘You ought to name the team the Lightning,’” Esposito said. “And I turned around and I went, ‘That’s it. That’s the name of this team.’”

It doesn’t hurt that the Tampa Bay area is often considered the lightning capital of North America, with more lightning strikes than other places on the continent.

Esposito also stated he liked the uniqueness of the Lightning name, which didn’t look or sound like other teams in the NHL.

“I wanted to be different,” added Esposito. “Everybody else was the Bruins, the Rangers, the Hawks, the Red Wings. This was Lightning, no S.”

Upon joining the NHL for its inaugural season in 1917, Toronto’s team was named the Arenas. They switched to the St. Patricks for the 1919-20 season, but they made yet another change in the 1926-27 season.

New manager Conn Smythe decided to name the team after the Maple Leaf badge worn by Canadian soldiers during the First World War. During that conflict, Smythe was a member of the 40th battery of the Canadian Army and was captured by the Germans, spending 15 months in a prisoner-of-war camp.

One question has lingered about the team’s name for decades: Why is it Maple Leafs and not Maple Leaves?

In 2017, the Washington Post sought to clarify the grammatical conundrum by reaching out to J.K. Chambers, a linguistic professor at the University of Toronto.

“It follows the simple rule that nouns used as proper nouns take regular (productive) plurals even if their common noun counterparts have irregular plurals,” Chambers told the newspaper.

Chambers provided another example to the Washington Post, writing “A stack of Life Magazine editions would be a stack of “Lifes” (regular plural) instead of “Lives” (irregular plural).”

In the 1940s, a popular hero named Johnny Canuck appeared in 28 issues of Dime Comics, fighting against the Germans at the height of the Second World War. Johnny Canuck was seen as Canada’s answer to Captain America and Uncle Sam — a cartoon character who promoted patriotism.

When Vancouver landed a Pacific Coast League team in 1945, they chose the name Canucks as a tribute to the returning war heroes. The team soon adopted a lumberjack version of a Johnny Canuck mascot, who wore a checkered shirt and toque, while carrying a hockey stick.

In 1970, Vancouver was awarded an NHL expansion franchise and opted to stick with the Canucks name.

Vegas owner Bill Foley had his fingerprints all over the name of his new NHL franchise.

Foley, who graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, wanted to call his new NHL team the Black Knights. But he received quite a bit of resistance to that potential name.

“When we first got the franchise awarded early on, I started talking about having the team called the Black Knights,” Foley told The Athletic in April of 2020. “I got pushback from West Point, and a little bit of pushback from the league. The league didn’t quite like it.”

The NHL also wanted the new team to steer away from any gambling-related references in the nickname.

“They’d prefer we don’t go in that direction,” Foley told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in June of 2016.

Finally, in November of 2016, Foley unveiled the name Vegas Golden Knights, in front of 5,000 fans outside of T-Mobile Arena.

“Our logo and our name are really going to exhibit the highest element of the warrior class — the knight,” Foley exclaimed to the cheering onlookers. “The knight protects the unprotected. The knight defends the realm. The knight never gives up, never gives in, always advances, never retreats. And that is what our team is going to be.”

In January of 1974, Washington owner Abe Pollin launched a contest to name his new NHL franchise that would start playing in the 1974-75 season.

“We have an NHL team. We have a place to play, but what we don’t have is a name for the team,” Pollin is quoted as saying in the Jan. 3, 1974 edition of the Washington Post.

In the weeks that followed, more than 12,000 submissions were received for the team name. Among the most popular choices were Domes, Cyclones, Streaks and Comets. More than 100 people suggested the name Pandas — a nod to the arrival of two giant pandas to the National Zoo in 1972.

On Jan. 21, 1974, Pollin opened an envelope to reveal the name “Capitals” as part of a splashy news conference at the team’s future arena at the Capital Center in Landover, Maryland.

“We think we have come up with a great name,” Pollin said at the news conference. “It wasn’t until 11:30 last night that my wife and I came up with the final name. It was unanimous.”

There was some drama surrounding Winnipeg’s nickname when they rejoined the NHL by inheriting the Atlanta Thrashers in 2011. Would they go back to the Jets or choose something new?

But that intrigue was erased on the draft floor in June, when team chairman Mark Chipman announced the team would be once again known as the Jets.

“That’s a daunting experience being up there in front of that many people and on TV and knowing how important the name is to so many people. It’s humbling,” Chipman said on June 24, 2011. “It’s really really humbling to have been able to utter those words tonight.”

The original Jets were a WHA powerhouse in the 1970s, before merging with the NHL prior to the 1979-80 season.

Winnipeg has been home to a Royal Canadian Air Force base since 1925, making it one of the oldest Air Force bases in Canada. Curiously, NHL.com floats the idea that original WHA team owner Ben Hatskin was reportedly a fan of the New York Jets and named his hockey team after the NFL squad.

(Photo: Kevin Sousa / NHLI via Getty Images)