I was scrolling through ESPN's NHL Schedules and came across the Utah Hockey Club.
The Utah Hockey Club....?
Oh, that's right, the old Phoenix Coyotes.
Now when it comes to any professional sports team moving, I am against movement 90% of the time, with 2 notable exceptions:
When teams leave Oakland: Guess what? Your new favorite team is whatever team is in San Francisco. That's not how Oakland works? It is now.
Any NHL team poached from Canada should be returned to Canada.
But the Coyotes going to Utah isn't that bad, it's at least a step in the right direction. I'm glad the Coyotes found a (good) new home.
According to the Desert News though, it takes 18 months to brand a team. Really? I find that hard to believe. Order some shirts, rush delivery, and make some logos. Pretty simple stuff.
Apparently as soon as the decision was made to leave Phoenix, the citizens of Utah were given a list of potential nicknames to choose from. The nickname decision became a process:
Utah Glaciers
Utah Mammoth
Utah Caribou
Utah Powder
Utah Squall
Utah Ice
Utah HC (Hockey Club)
Utah Freeze
Utah Frost
Utah Hive
Utah Swarm
Utah Mountaineers
Utah Venom
Utah Canyons
Utah Yeti
Utah Black Diamonds
Utah Outlaws
Utah Fury
Utah Blast
Utah Blizzard
Now I highlighted my 6 favorites, but the team itself whittled down the list to 6:
Blizzard - Hockey Club - Mammoth - Outlaws - Venom - Yeti
The rumor is that the new Utah Hockey club will officially become the Utah Yeti next year.
But I can't get past how a simple decision turned into an 18-month handwringing.
Welcome to America.
I have told this story many times, but it bears repeating.
When I was a teenager, I used to go to Cleveland Indians' games. Most years the baseball team sucked, but going down to the old ballpark wasn't about promoting some sort of white supremacist agenda, it was simply about the game of baseball.
And every year I'd see that guy protesting Chief Wahoo and I'd 'boo' him. It was his freedom to protest, it was my freedom to protest his protest.
You all know the rest of the story, the protests gained ground and the team eventually changed both their nickname and their logo. The decision was made by weak-willed owner Paul Dolan and was supported by the city's largest newspaper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
The PD refused to run polls to see if the name should be changed, they said the popularity of the nickname was irrelevant versus 'the right thing to do.'
.
But here's the ruse, the easiest thing in the world to do would have been to revert the nickname back to the Cleveland Spiders, the team's nickname between 1889 and 1899, back when the Spiders had Cy Young on their roster.
Market research showed that the name Spiders had a "negative connotation" for some, so it was up to Mr. Dolan to find the right mixture of vision and Cleveland Heritage.
Now Paul Dolan can't say that he named his team after the Guardians of the Galaxy, or else he would have had to pay Disney CA$H, so technically, the new nickname is based off of two hundred-year-old statues that stand on the edge of the Cuyahoga River, but we've already established that Paul Dolan doesn't really care about history.
He was looking for a nickname with low negative connotations and high, but vague, positive ones. He didn't want a nickname that was problematic in any size, shape, or form. The result became the Guardians, the best nickname branding and corporate synergy could come up with.
For the old people, who are going to die in a few years anyhow, Dolan didn't care if he pissed them off, the hardcore Indian fans weren't going anywhere.
But as teams as varied as the Chicago Blackhawks and the Florida State Seminoles fight to keep their nicknames, the bigger picture still remains how to market teams and move merchandise.
Fake problems that worry rich Americans.
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