PWHL Branding and Uniforms 2023-24

[seasaltvanilla]

If you added Hockey Club and squinted I think Minnesota Superior HC is salvageable.

 

 Boston Wicked gave me gallstones.

[walkerws]

It looks like they just went with Fan Controlled Football names and attached them to cities. So you'll hear the Superior of Minnesota or the Wicked from Boston. UGH! It's over thinking simple stuff. 

[CaliforniaGlowin]

Not great but definitely unique.  

[Dilbert]

Turrible.

[chcarlson23]

Minnesota Superior feels on par with Minnesota Wild, and it’s definitely the best of those names, but not great. I kinda don’t mind it though for Lake Superior, but at the same time, why did every single team go with a weird, non-plural name? That’s just kinda ridiculous

[BeerGuyJordan]

1 hour ago, vtgco said:

Boston should've gone with @mcrosby's NWSL concept name & logo and still kept what, presumably, is a Salem witchcraft theme:

 

"New York Sound" is the only name that sounds at all usable as-is; is the implication that they'll play on Long Island?

The last rumor I heard was them closing in on an agreement with the Bridgeport Islanders to play there.

1 hour ago, vtgco said:

RIP Minnesota Whitecaps and NY Riveters branding. Why must you die for this

Those were two great identities. To be fair, other than Toronto, I thought the PHF's team identitioes were all decent or better.

 

Montreal had a great logo and I liked their jerseys.

 

The most recent Boston logo would have been good if they'd just fixed the centering. Last season's jerseys were the best they had.

 

Connecticut was a fun branding that had some great wave features on their sets.

 

Buffalo's logos could have used a glow up, but their uniforms were sharp.

 

I want this to succeed, as a supporter of the NWHL/PHF from day one. This new league's insistence on "winning" and destroying all traces of their former competitor has long since crossed the line into bad business territory.

 

As a fan. The PWHL so far has been a big step back for the game and its fans. As a Rivs fan, I don't know if I'll ever be able to fully get past abandoning that identity.

[Sodboy13]

I remain at least partially convinced, as I have for years, that the people running the PWHPA and now PWHL want to run women's pro hockey into the ground.

 

I've been losing my mind all day at "Toronto Torch." Good thing there's not another pro hockey team in Canada with a storied history of torch imagery. And even better that such a theoretical team does not have some sort of blood rivalry with Toronto.

[Ark]

Literally not a single plural ending with S

 

These executives must think women's sports are a joke.

[Echo]

I did not authorize the use of my name for one of these teams.  The PWHL will be hearing from my lawyers.

[Chromatic]

These names are awful. They make 'Wild' sound like a good name. 

 

I don't know why there is such a predisposition to making women's sports team nicknames either cringy adjectives or weirdly pluralized nouns. 

[monkeypower]

5 hours ago, Sodboy13 said:

I remain at least partially convinced, as I have for years, that the people running the PWHPA and now PWHL want to run women's pro hockey into the ground.

 

Anecdotally speaking, from stories I've heard from people (which could very well just be limited to the experiences and beliefs of the people telling these anecdotes), women's hockey has some systemic issues, starting in the minor hockey levels, surrounding decision makers and establishments.

 

I don't think they truly want to run women's pro hockey into the ground, I think it's a symptom of larger issues.

[Sodboy13]

18 hours ago, BeerGuyJordan said:

I want this to succeed, as a supporter of the NWHL/PHF from day one. This new league's insistence on "winning" and destroying all traces of their former competitor has long since crossed the line into bad business territory.

 

As a fan. The PWHL so far has been a big step back for the game and its fans. As a Rivs fan, I don't know if I'll ever be able to fully get past abandoning that identity.

We're two months out from the start of the season and there's no schedule, no confirmed venues to go with the market assignments, and only (informed) speculation on (very bad) team identities. It feels like a "dog finally caught the car" scenario.

 

8 hours ago, monkeypower said:

 

Anecdotally speaking, from stories I've heard from people (which could very well just be limited to the experiences and beliefs of the people telling these anecdotes), women's hockey has some systemic issues, starting in the minor hockey levels, surrounding decision makers and establishments.

 

I don't think they truly want to run women's pro hockey into the ground, I think it's a symptom of larger issues.

This sounds a bit like women's soccer, where too many people are power tripping in their little fiefdoms to see the bigger picture and the change and growth that are happening.

 

On the micro level, that gets you the Chicago Red Stars being fall-down drunk as an organization over the past couple years because Arnim Whisler was still operating like the offices were in a Lincoln Park three flat and Rory Dames being allowed to operate as an abusive god king.

 

On the macro level, that gets you US Soccer seemingly ignoring all the stories from 2015 and 2019 of "Hey, (European nation) finally figured out how to give a crap about the women's game" and then being completely shocked by how ordinary the USWNT was in 2023.

[Skycast]

22 hours ago, officeglenn said:

"Boston Wicked"? They may as well have called them the Boston Vanilla NutTaps.

 

That SNL skit is pure gold and an all-time favorite. I'd totally buy me some Vanilla NutTaps schwag.

[spartacat_12]

14 hours ago, Ark said:

Literally not a single plural ending with S

 

These executives must think women's sports are a joke.

 

For Ottawa & Montreal I guess I can see it because they want to avoid issues with having a non-bilingual name. The Ottawa Alerts were a pro women's hockey team that played during the First World War, but I guess they were worried about the plural version not being French.

[BeerGuyJordan]

15 hours ago, Sodboy13 said:

I remain at least partially convinced, as I have for years, that the people running the PWHPA and now PWHL want to run women's pro hockey into the ground.

 

I've been losing my mind all day at "Toronto Torch." Good thing there's not another pro hockey team in Canada with a storied history of torch imagery. And even better that such a theoretical team does not have some sort of blood rivalry with Toronto.

I don't think they're deliberately trying to run it into the ground. I think just so focused on doing it their way that they don't care about making bad decisions, so long as they're different decisions than the PHF.

 

They bought that league, all of it's assets, connections, identities, and contracts. In business, when you buy a more established brand, it's usually to use its successes. The PWHL bought the PHF so they could make sure it was killed in its entirety.

10 hours ago, monkeypower said:

I don't think they truly want to run women's pro hockey into the ground, I think it's a symptom of larger issues.

Which makes killing the PHF all the more infuriating. They were making real strides for the women's game. We're there bad decisions? Yes, but they'd spent 8 years learning and building.

 

Throwing out the baby with the bath water just so your side could win killed a lot of trust and goodwill right out of the gate.

 

1 hour ago, Sodboy13 said:

We're two months out from the start of the season and there's no schedule, no confirmed venues to go with the market assignments, and only (informed) speculation on (very bad) team identities. It feels like a "dog finally caught the car" scenario.

Yep. This league will have fewer players who are being paid less than last season in the PHF, all while increasing the player pool by about 75%.

 

They hung players out to dry. Killed brands with built-in fanbases for ego rather than make the business decision to build on them. All the branding info so far has been inferior to what came before.

 

I tried to give them the benefit of doubt initially, but every time I turn around they're making bad decisions. 

[BeerGuyJordan]

22 minutes ago, spartacat_12 said:

 

For Ottawa & Montreal I guess I can see it because they want to avoid issues with having a non-bilingual name. The Ottawa Alerts were a pro women's hockey team that played during the First World War, but I guess they were worried about the plural version not being French.

It's a shame they didn't already own the rights to a name in Montreal that already met that brief, and had a solid logo that tied into French-Canadian heritage. 

[The_Admiral]

These names are terrible, and they've gone way too far in salting the earth, but let's be honest, the PHF was just as bumbling and power-tripping as the new people. They should have kept what worked (New York Riveters) and gotten rid of what didn't (apparently, everything else).

[Sodboy13]

13 hours ago, the admiral said:

These names are terrible, and they've gone way too far in salting the earth, but let's be honest, the PHF was just as bumbling and power-tripping as the new people.

This is a fair point to make, and it is more than worth remembering that Reagan Carey and the other folks in charge of the league announced a huge boost to the salary cap and were signing players to contracts reflecting it, while quietly negotiating an acquisition deal that would void every single one of those contracts. Profoundly bad actors.

[Needschat]

New York Torch could work, with the colors being flame red, seafoam (copper patina), and copper. 

[nash61]

11 hours ago, Needschat said:

New York Torch could work, with the colors being flame red, seafoam (copper patina), and copper. 

Oddly enough, they might run into some issues from Insomniac Games, as Torchers is the default fictional team in the Spiderman Playstation games.

 

 

(Insomniac themselves may have already run into problems with the Rangers, as the most recent game has the Torchers in Islanders colours)