Seattle NHL Brand Discussion

[CaliforniaGlowin]

Great idea.  Ask us what we want instead of forcing something on us and expect us to like it (Golden Knights).

At first I voted sea animal, but I realized there are enough of those in sports.  Now I want a mythical creature.

I would want a dark navy (almost black) and neon green.  Blue and green seem to be Seattle's sports colors now.  As long as it doesn't conflict with the Canucks, go for it.  No NHL team has neon.

[kolob]

 

4 hours ago, BrianLion said:

Why is "Kraken" even a thing for Seattle? It's a mythical sea creature allegedly from the North Atlantic. It'd be like naming a team from Florida the "Sasquatch"  

 

Well, "Kraken" is a thing because we teams out there called "Wild"

[kolob]

But, as I've stated a number of times ... I love the name Seattle Sockeyes. It fits. It FEELS like a hockey name and a combination of green, red and ... maybe black or a gold, could work and look good.

[The_Admiral]

5 hours ago, BrianLion said:

Why is "Kraken" even a thing for Seattle? It's a mythical sea creature allegedly from the North Atlantic. It'd be like naming a team from Florida the "Sasquatch"  

Yeah I kept saying that over and over but BELTS AND BOOBS

[CaliforniaGlowin]

Yes Sockeyes is definitely a hockey name.    Game hashtags would be like #SharksGetSocked

[IceCap]

7 hours ago, lilgump said:

 

I think you hit the nail on the head. It's all about the "release the kraken" hype.  It's water themed, sort of like a giant octopus which is very local. 

 

The original Kraken is Norse in origin (so Atlantic and not the Pacific), and it’s not even an octopus. The OG kraken is just a really, really big whale. 

 

So the Seattle Kraken with a giant octopus logo would be a doublely dumb identity. As well as infringing on the Wings’ schtick.  

[Cosmic]

They’ve been using enough red and black that it’s not an accident, so it’s interesting that it’s not even an option on their poll. It’s going to be really disappointing now when they roll out red/black Kraken uniforms.

[IceCap]

1 hour ago, Cosmic said:

They’ve been using enough red and black that it’s not an accident, so it’s interesting that it’s not even an option on their poll. It’s going to be really disappointing now when they roll out red/black Kraken uniforms.

Could be a Winnipeg Jets 2.0 situation where the owners desperately wanted to be the Manitoba Moose until the fanbase forced them to be the Jets by sheer force of will. 

[Chromatic]

On 5/9/2019 at 12:45 PM, spartacat_12 said:

The Seattle franchise has just released a new fan site, and it provides us with some new info, as well as some fan polls about the branding of the team:

 

https://www.seattlenhlfans.com/

 

A couple of the main takeaways:

• The team name is expected to be announced sometime this fall (it doesn't say anything about the logo/uniforms/colours)
• While the site's colour scheme is the black, red, grey we've seen so far, the poll options for team colours are: "blue & green", "green & something else", "blue & something else", and "anything but blue & green" (I voted green & something else)
• The options for the type of team name are: "Mythical creatures" (referencing Kraken), "Sea animals" (Sockeyes, Sea Lions, Seals, etc.), "Historical references" (Totems, Metropolitans), and "Anything that eats Canucks"

I voted 'anything but blue and green'.

 

Also, what exactly 'eats Canucks'? The only thing I can think of is throwing a lumberjack into a woodsplitter.

[_DietDrPepper_]

Seattle Sockeyes, Green and Yellow with maybe some red sprinkled around, but mainly green and yellow, that would be great. Undoubtedly the worst is the Kraken and red and black 

[Wings]

I'll always love Seattle Breakers or Pilots. But neither is happening. 

[dont care]

14 hours ago, Ice_Cap said:

The original Kraken is Norse in origin (so Atlantic and not the Pacific), and it’s not even an octopus. The OG kraken is just a really, really big whale. 

 

So the Seattle Kraken with a giant octopus logo would be a doublely dumb identity. As well as infringing on the Wings’ schtick.  

But the main image of a kraken today is a giant squid which there are a lot of them in the North Pacific Ocean, mostly in the trench off of japan but still they aren’t just an atlantic belief. 

[Gothamite]

Yeah, I don’t see Kraken as being exclusively North Atlantic at this point.  There are arguments against it, but that’s not one of them. 

[IceCap]

44 minutes ago, dont care said:

But the main image of a kraken today is a giant squid which there are a lot of them in the North Pacific Ocean, mostly in the trench off of japan but still they aren’t just an atlantic belief. 

“Belief”? 

Of course there’s a belief in octopuses or squids in the Pacific...they exist there. They’re just not the basis for the mythological creature called the “kraken.”

 

37 minutes ago, Gothamite said:

Yeah, I don’t see Kraken as being exclusively North Atlantic at this point.  There are arguments against it, but that’s not one of them. 

I don’t know. I think there’s something to be said for preserving the original meaning of myths and legends and not aiding in their degradation via gaudy expansion identities.

[dont care]

1 hour ago, Ice_Cap said:

“Belief”? 

Of course there’s a belief in octopuses or squids in the Pacific...they exist there. They’re just not the basis for the mythological creature called the “kraken.”

 

I don’t know. I think there’s something to be said for preserving the original meaning of myths and legends and not aiding in their degradation via gaudy expansion identities.

I was talking about the belief of giant squid like monsters taking down ships which is now the base design for krakens. Seattle is a nautical city and lore like the kraken does match the city well. 

[Gothamite]

2 hours ago, Ice_Cap said:

I think there’s something to be said for preserving the original meaning of myths and legends and not aiding in their degradation

 

But that’s not the way myths work.  They are appropriated and adapted to new places and times.  Aphrodite becomes Venus, Poseidon becomes Neptune.  Even Christmas was once Saturnalia.

 

And over time they change and take on a life of their own. Nobody wants to be that guy constantly reminding us that Vikings didn’t actually wear horns on their helmets. 

 

Every storyteller knows that once she lets her creation into the world, it belongs to the world.  I don’t see any problem with the Kraken evolving from a large whale to a different kind of deep sea monster.  The essence of the legend remains true. 

[IceCap]

46 minutes ago, Gothamite said:

But that’s not the way myths work.  They are appropriated and adapted to new places and times.  Aphrodite becomes Venus, Poseidon becomes Neptune.  Even Christmas was once Saturnalia.

 

And over time they change and take on a life of their own. Nobody wants to be that guy constantly reminding us that Vikings didn’t actually wear horns on their helmets. 

Yes that’s true. And I’m not suggesting that we burn every copy of Clash of the Titans.

I do think, however, that older stories, the roots of these things still relevant in our culture today, are important and worth preserving. 

 

 

[Gothamite]

Agreed.   But I still don’t see the conflict here. 

 

Just as the Minnesota Vikings provide opportunity to talk about the historical Vikings, a Seattle Kraken would offer opportunity to re-tell the evolving history of the myth.  After all, it’s already been changed a couple times. 

[IceCap]

57 minutes ago, Gothamite said:

Agreed.   But I still don’t see the conflict here.

My main issue here is that’s piling on new things that don’t relate to each other. 

 

The kraken only got conflated with giant octopuses and squid because the old viking stories about the kraken got conflated with unrelated sea stories involving giant kraken and squid. 

And the the original Clash of the Titans ran with it and codified that version of the kraken myth (which itself was a problematic movie, as the kraken isn’t a creature of Greek myth). 

 

So there’s the drifting myth of the kraken, mostly having gotten started with mistaken conflation of similar but unique sea stories. 

Which in and of itself isn’t a bad thing, as you’ve said. Myths drift and evolve and get conflated with one and other. 

My issue, as someone with a background studying history, is that this process is irksome when trying to untangle older histories, sagas, legends, and myths to figure out what we can say is based on what and what the origin points of certain myths are. And to see it happening (almost) in real time can be frustrating  

 

All of that is compounded by the idea of placing a team with an octopus kraken identity in the Pacific Northwest, a continent’s length away from the legend’s birthplace. What about Seattle in particular is kraken-like? It’s got a port? Lots of cities have ocean ports. It just seems like everyone collectively said “yeah Seattle seems like a place for a team called the Kraken” for no rhyme or reason. 

 

And I find the objection of “so what?” to the idea of raising these objections to be rooted in the idea of “screw facts! this sounds cool!” 

 

57 minutes ago, Gothamite said:

Just as the Minnesota Vikings provide opportunity to talk about the historical Vikings

It’s interesting you bring up the Vikings. Their logo was made during a time when horned-helmeted vikings were still the default image of vikings in the popular consciousness. I’m not saying this makes their logo or helmet design bad. Logos and uniforms are the product of their time and the Vikings’ identity in its own context and history works as a sports brand. 

 

What I’m getting at is that if a team named the Vikings were founded today? I’d bet they’d use a more realistic depiction of a viking warrior or helmet.

This isn’t a knock against the Minnesota team, but it’s just an assertion that the “real vikings didn’t have horns” guy was successful in educating the public about what actual viking helmets looked like. And that a more modern interpretation would likely reference the accurate original idea and not the drifted version the Minnesota team went with in the 1960s. 

[Gothamite]

“Facts”?

 

...with a mythological beastie?