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Seattle NHL Brand Discussion


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44 minutes ago, Tygers09 said:

The Golden Knights were named by the owner because he served in the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. There they're known as the Black Knights, but the owner wanted to use Golden instead, because of the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas.

As @LMU said, the name doesn't have any local relevance to Vegas. It has a personal meaning to the owner, and fair enough. I'd name a team whatever I pleased if I paid millions of dollars for it too. Doesn't mean it has a local connection though. 

 

Also? Vegas had nothing to do with the "Golden" aspect of the name. Ownership wanted to be the Black Knights, but the NHL said no as it could both tread on the US Army's trademarks and treaded on the Chicago Blackhawks' turf. 

"Golden Knights" is the name of the US Army's parachute team, and was ownership's backup name if "Black Knights" was denied. It had nothing to do with the "glitz and glamour of Las Vegas." 

 

Personally? I was hoping they'd go with "Desert Knights" or "Neon Knights" to get a local tie-in, but I like Golden Knights well enough. I'm not a fan of the style of helmet they went with, but I suppose a proper knight helmet would run the risk of infringing on the London Knights' trademarks. 

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On 2/5/2020 at 4:59 AM, IceCap said:

Locally Appropriate NHL Team Names

 

Chicago Blackhawks- Named after a Native military leader from the region.

 

St. Louis Blues- References the local music traditions of the city of St. Louis.

 

 

I will note that the St. Louis Blues are actually named after the W.C. Handy song "St. Louis Blues," not just for the general local music. And technically, the Blackhawks were named after a locally formed WWI military unit that was in turn named after the Sauk leader--it's a subtle difference, though it probably doesn't really matter in the end.

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21 hours ago, IceCap said:

I'm not a fan of the style of helmet they went with, but I suppose a proper knight helmet would run the risk of infringing on the London Knights' trademarks. 

I don't think that infringing on the London Knights' trademarks was EVER a problem. I think it was a convenient but false excuse to not go with just "Knights", which would have been much better, IMO...Las Vegas Knights. As far as the helmet style...again, nothing to do with London, but all to do with Foley's obsession with being as similar to West Point and Army as possible. (which has always intrigued me because Foley was an Air Force guy). Anyway, the Spartan-style helmet most resembled the West Point helmet, and it was much easier to craft a negative-space "V" into that bucket style...nothing to do with London.

 

Back to Seattle...I would say the absolute BEST team name is one that has both local relevance, and a pop-culture appeal/recognition inside AND outside the local market. You could say that San Jose nailed it with the "Sharks" monicker. I don't think Seattle, with all its options, has that best-of-both-worlds name. "Krāken" has some local relevance (as much as many N.A. sports names) but, I agree with you, not As MUCH as "Sockeyes", "Totems", "Evergreens" etc. (btw, as a Canadian kid, I think of British Columbia when I hear "sockeye salmon").

On the flip side, do you think anyone outside of Seattle will have much interest in a Socks, Totes, or 'Greens named team?

 

What about the age factor? I would guess... that if you were able to poll ONLY 5- 25 yr. old Seattle-ites, the favourite option would be Krāken by a landslide.

You admitted, that as a kid, the cool "Raptors" name (regardless as to whether it had a local reference or not) tweaked your interest in basketball.

Would the same thing happen in Seattle?...Young ones drawn to a game because of an iconic, cool identity? Isn't an appeal to the kids, a big factor in growing a sport?

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56 minutes ago, sparky chewbarky said:

What about the age factor? I would guess... that if you were able to poll ONLY 5- 25 yr. old Seattle-ites, the favourite option would be Krāken by a landslide.

You admitted, that as a kid, the cool "Raptors" name (regardless as to whether it had a local reference or not) tweaked your interest in basketball.

Would the same thing happen in Seattle?...Young ones drawn to a game because of a trendy, cool identity? Isn't an appeal to the kids, a big factor in growing a sport?

I mean, if the Seattle Times poll says anything about the younger demographics in Seattle, they don't really seem to care for "Kraken", either; "Sockeyes" won that poll (fairly comfortably ahead of the other options, too, if I recall correctly), and I don't remember "Kraken" placing particularly well on it. And I'm pretty sure the team was referencing that poll when it comes to the team's name.

 

As for the book thing...I imagine an ownership group that's willing and able to plop down the massive expansion fee the NHL asked for out of them would be more then rich enough to give some cash to a small-time author so they could use the name "Seattle Sockeyes", especially if said author is already willing to play ball with them over it.

 

And the difference between Toronto's NBA team and this is that the Raptors struck their name while the iron was still hot; Jurassic Park came out in 1993, the Toronto NBA team came about two years later in 1995. The hype over Jurassic Park was still highly prominent when the Raptors were founded, and the 90's NBA was all about being trendy and cool. And yet, even they came very close to rebranding entirely just around 10 or so years later once the newness and the Jurassic Park fad had worn off and the team was stuck in perpetual mediocrity. If they didn't win the title this year, I'm 100% sure they'd have begun rebranding themselves completely away from the dinosaur identity and taken up the Huskies name.

 

"Kraken" would be coming just about a decade after Clash of the Titans or Pirates of the Caribbean (arguably longer in PotC's case, since most people only really remember the first movie very fondly) were culturally relevant, a fair bit longer then "Raptors" did after Jurassic Park was. The iron in this case is frigid cold, not even close to being hot. Neither of those films are trendy or cool anymore, so still trying to capitalize on that seems like a poor idea when the audience you're appealing to doesn't really seem to care much for the name.

 

And historically, NHL teams don't even really tend to go for trendy and hip names regardless, even the most modern franchises in the league. I mean, what's "hip" and "trendy" about names like "Arizona Coyotes", "Nashville Predators", "Atlanta Thrashers", "Minnesota Wild", "Columbus Blue Jackets" or "Vegas Golden Knights"? 😛

One's a basic canine identity, one's a generic descriptor for a carnivorous animal, one's a state bird, one's a generic word for the outdoors, one's a Civil War reference of all things and one's just another basic sports team name with another word put before it for trademark reasons.

 

None of them capitalized on pop culture trends around the time they were introduced; hell, the last expansion team in the NHL to really even do that was when the Mighty Ducks came around in 1993. And that's primarily because they were literally created to capitalize on the success of the film they were named for.

 

The NHL simply isn't a league where trendy and hip cultural names for new teams is a norm. If anything, it's the opposite; a league where the old-school naming conventions still reign supreme.

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42 minutes ago, Ridleylash said:

 

The NHL simply isn't a league where trendy and hip cultural names for new teams is a norm. If anything, it's the opposite; a league where the old-school naming conventions still reign supreme.

Well, if that's the case, why isn't the Metropolitans on the top of the list? 

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2 minutes ago, Tygers09 said:

Well, if that's the case, why isn't the Metropolitans on the top of the list? 

Because you’re not naming the team the same name as one of the league’s divisions.

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3 hours ago, Tygers09 said:

Well, if that's the case, why isn't the Metropolitans on the top of the list? 

The NHL has a Metropolitan Division, and they're not renaming an entire division for one team in the other conference; that's ludicrous. And I said old-school naming conventions, not old-school names in general.

 

And as a bit of a fun thing, I'll go ahead and do a bit of a thought experiment; which of the two names would fit better in the 1967 NHL expansion list? Ideally, that's what you want; a name that in 10, 20, 30 years you'll be looking at and still saying "yeah, that's a great name for this team". Let's slot in "Sockeyes" first;

  • Los Angeles Kings, Pittsburgh Penguins, Philadelphia Flyers, St. Louis Blues, Seattle Sockeyes

This works really well, to me, because the names all look and sound like they come from a similar era of branding; they all have just the right cadence to them, and they all flow beautifully against their city names because they all either start with the same letter as the city name (Pittsburgh, Seattle) or the first letter used for the team name flows well against the last letter of the city name when vocally pronounced (Los Angeles, Philadelphia, St. Louis).

 

Now let's slot the name "Kraken" into that exact same expansion;

  • Los Angeles Kings, Pittsburgh Penguins, Philadelphia Flyers, St. Louis Blues, Seattle Kraken

While the rest of these names flow with the city name, Seattle's now flows against the city name; a hard "K" sound starts the team name if you pronounce it either "Krack-en" or "Kray-ken"; which is opposed to the soft "e" sound that ends the city name. Seattle completely lacks the "-s" sound at the end of the city's name, which helps to soften the harder "K-" sound in the Kings' case. Try pronouncing them back-to-back, you'll probably see what I mean.

 

2 hours ago, Pharos04 said:

Still never stopped the Washington NATIONALS

Nobody calls the NL teams the "Nationals". They call them the "NL teams" or "National League teams". The teams in the Metropolitan Division are consistently called the "Metropolitan teams", which sounds exactly like "Metropolitan team's". That's the key difference. And in the context of the NHL, the division came before the Seattle team; therefore, the division has precedence.

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59 minutes ago, LMU said:

Because you’re not naming the team the same name as one of the league’s divisions.

 

Seattle should just name themselves the Seattle Patricks, and when the NHL wants that name back, trade for the Metropolitans name.

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Hey, whatever name gets picked, some people are going to like it, some will love it, and there will always be some critic(s) that will have a comment on how it doesn't fit or ask what were they were thinking. Cant please everyone.

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I'm guessing no Metropolitans, because a team in a city w the Mariners doesn't want one of the their other teams called the Seattle Mets. Also the Metro conf in the NHL. It would be weird if the Nationals were in the AL and I don't think they'd go w Nationals if they were. So being named after a conf that isn't yours sounds wrong as well.

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1 hour ago, Mingjai said:

 

Seattle should just name themselves the Seattle Patricks, and when the NHL wants that name back, trade for the Metropolitans name.


That’s nice. If I recall correctly, Lester and Frank Patrick founded the Metropolitans.

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4 hours ago, sparky chewbarky said:

Foley's obsession with being as similar to West Point and Army as possible. (which has always intrigued me because Foley was an Air Force guy).


While Foley opted to transfer to the U.S. Air Force in order to fulfill his active duty service obligation, he was a graduate of the United States Military Academy.

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the Seattle team has it narrowed down to five names, and they are in the graphics and copyright stages before finalizing and making a declaration. They plan to announce it in March.

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[Katie Townsend, the VP of Communications for NHL Seattle] said recent rumors -- like one last week that the Seattle team would be named the Seattle Kraken (a mythical squid creature) -- are not to be taken as fact.

 

https://www.desertsun.com/story/sports/hockey/2020/02/03/seattle-nhl-gm-ron-francis-visits-palm-springs-discusses-building-franchise-scratch/4627896002/

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3 minutes ago, TaylorMade said:

 

Here's the list:

 

  • Kraken
  • Krayken
  • Krackin!
  • Krackle (candy bar tie in?)
  • Krakkken (going after the white supremacist MAGA demo)
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1 hour ago, TaylorMade said:

the Seattle team has it narrowed down to five names, and they are in the graphics and copyright stages before finalizing and making a declaration. They plan to announce it in March.

If I had to guess which five are left, I'd say the final five would probably be;

  • Sockeyes (locally relevant, definitely marketable, easy to adapt to the color scheme they're using in all their branding; and since they're consistently using the salmon and blue through all their site reworks, I'm assuming those are decided officially as the franchise's colors)
  • Sea Lions (locally relevant, could definitely be marketable and I guess could work with the color scheme they're using in their branding; but I'm not sure they'd be keen on getting compared in any form to a team as historically-derided in the NHL as the Oakland/California Seals)
  • Evergreens (locally relevant, could make for some fun imagery; but I wonder if they'd be wary of the fact that trees are stationary and thus could be compared to pylons in hockey)
  • Totems (historic name, but given that totem poles aren't native to the region and this one may end up encroaching too much on the T-Birds' turf, I don't think it's a very likely pick)
  • Kraken (definitely marketable, so it's probably still kind of in contention; but it might not work well with the branding colors we've seen so far, and I think that the apathy the Seattle Times poll showed locals had to the name hurts it significantly in my opinion; new hockey brands in this day and age tend to be locally relevant more often then not)
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For what it's worth, Sea Lions aren't well liked here since they hover at the Ballard Locks and poach Salmon, and the locals LOVE the Salmon. The city is constantly trying new and humane ways to rid the area of the Sea Lions. Given that, I'd say Sockeyes would be a better choice than Sea Lions.

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9 hours ago, Ridleylash said:

And as a bit of a fun thing, I'll go ahead and do a bit of a thought experiment; which of the two names would fit better in the 1967 NHL expansion list? Ideally, that's what you want; a name that in 10, 20, 30 years you'll be looking at and still saying "yeah, that's a great name for this team". Let's slot in "Sockeyes" first;

  • Los Angeles Kings, Pittsburgh Penguins, Philadelphia Flyers, St. Louis Blues, Seattle Sockeyes

This works really well, to me, because the names all look and sound like they come from a similar era of branding; they all have just the right cadence to them, and they all flow beautifully against their city names because they all either start with the same letter as the city name (Pittsburgh, Seattle) or the first letter used for the team name flows well against the last letter of the city name when vocally pronounced (Los Angeles, Philadelphia, St. Louis).


I’ve never seen an argument so perfectly tow the line between subjective and objective. This argument should be 100% subjective but I feel like any rational person would agree with it. Seattle Sockeyes fits seamlessly with these other ‘67 expansion franchises. 

 

How would you even label the phenomena of a team name “feeling right” when lined up next to opponents? What is the term for that?

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