CJR

There's also the fact that a trademark has already been issued (and has been issued for years) to the ECHL Grizzlies for "Utah Grizzlies" for the purposes of "Entertainment services, namely professional hockey games and exhibitions." In fact, when that "Utah Grizzlies" mark was applied for, the NBA did oppose it, as was their right to do. If I'm reading the history correctly, the NBA opposed and there were settlement negotiations and then the opposition was dropped and the trademark application was approved. Unless there was some settlement that is not noted in the trademark filing itself (I don't even know if that's possible, maybe Utah explicitly said "If you allow this, we promise to never sell to an NHL team" or something like that), the NBA Grizzlies are too late. Their chance to say no was in 2008 and they allowed it. Whether Smith wants to have a team that shares a name with an NBA team is a whole other discussion. There are certainly branding-related issues with the name that are not trademark-related issues.

This keeps getting repeated and isn't entirely true. At one point, Bill Foley said that his team couldn't be the Knights because of London and everyone ran with that. Foley said a lot of things at that time that weren't entirely true. The London Knights explicitly said that no one from Vegas even asked them about using the name and Foley later said it was always going to be the something Knights. We only have to look at the next expansion to see how it can work out. Seattle's ownership filed a trademark application for Palm Springs Firebirds as their AHL team. The OHL Flint Firebirds opposed it. The two sides worked out a deal and Flint dropped their opposition (and then the Firebirds switched to "Coachella Valley" as their place name). The Memphis Grizzlies (or any other trademark holder) might choose to fight harder than the Flint Firebirds did but it's not the automatic rejection that it's sometimes made out to be.

Different name but I'm still here and still an admin. I just don't do anything.

Seattle Mad Oxen?

Strickland says the Coyotes are staying put no matter the result of the vote tomorrow. https://twitter.com/andystrickland/status/351686847086342144 Not sure I believe it. If the league lets its bluff get called, they'll never get to bully a municipality into an arena deal again.

http://www.azcentral...yotes-deal.html And then there's the fact that the deal completely fell apart and got put back together in a matter of hours. http://www.foxsportsarizona.com/nhl/phoenix-coyotes/story/Glendale-city-council-to-force-July-2-vo?blockID=915399&feedID=3545

Sounds familiar.

Seattle's mayor says Kypreos is wrong, Key Arena will be ready. http://www.twitter.com/mayormcginn/status/348111881749266433 "Will" be ready?

So Kypreos says that Glendale will not be giving RSE the money they want... But also that Key Arena won't be ready this season so the team is staying put anyway. http://kuklaskorner.com/hockey/comments/early-morning-tweets-bode-poorly-for-the-coyotes I'd thought that second part had already been debunked but even if it's true, I find it hard to believe that the NHL would say "Okay, fine, you called our bluff, we'll stick around." They'll find an even worse place to put the team for next year.

Via @NHLhistorygirl...

I'm just going to directly quote @seangentille here...

Is that because she should have called this Jamieson guy? http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/westsideinsider/152205

Do it to Atlanta! Do it to Atlanta! Not me! Atlanta!

The Prince of Wales Trophy was for the regular season champions of the Wales Conference from 1974-75 to 1980-81.

This is still kind of in beta but I figured I'd post it here... http://www.detroithockey.net/team/arena/rafters.php A diagram of the placement of the Red Wings' banners at Joe Louis Arena. Something I've been playing around with for awhile.