How Every NHL team Got Its Name

After Disney had a monster movie hit in 1992 with The Mighty Ducks starring Emilio Estevez, the NHL looked to capitalize on the popularity by awarding a franchise to Disney in 1993. The club was called the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim complete with the same logo from the film. “If we’re a very good team, I think it will be a great name. If we’re a very bad team, it will be a bad name. But I welcome the puns,” Disney chairman Michael Eisner said when launching the name in March of 1993.

For the first 12 seasons of their existence, they were officially known as the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. In January of 2006, new team owners Henry and Susan Samueli announced the club would be re-branded as the Anaheim Ducks starting in the 2006-07 season.

In 1924, Boston became the first NHL team to be based in the United States, when grocery store magnate Charles Adams secured the team. Adams insisted the colors of his hockey team match the same black and gold scheme from his supermarket chain. Head coach, Art Ross came up with "Bruins", a name for brown bears used in classic folk tales. 

In 1969, owners Seymour Knox III and Northup Knox wanted the team's logo and name to be unique. "Bison" was a common choice for Buffalo sports teams, but Knox wanted something different. Because of that, the organization held a name-the-team contest, where fans could submit suggestions for the team's name.

The winning choice came from Harry Cole, a Toronto filmmaker, and the Sabres have kept the name ever since. Knox III stated that a Sabre was a weapon carried by a leader and could be used effectively on both offense and defense.

The Atlanta Flames relocated to Alberta in the spring of 1980 and the new owners in Calgary opted to keep the team’s nickname. The Flames originally got their name in Atlanta after the fires that torched much of Georgia during the Civil War. When the team relocated to Calgary, new owner Nelson Skalbania figured the Flames nickname would still work in the oil-rich province of Alberta.

The team simply changed its logo from a flaming “A” to a flaming “C” upon moving from Atlanta to Calgary.

Peter Karmanos wasted no time in renaming the Hartford Whalers when they relocated to North Carolina in the spring of 1997. On the day the move was announced, Karmanos revealed the team would be called the Carolina Hurricanes. There was no public contest to name the team.

Karmanos simply picked the name himself, choosing a powerful weather system that is known to cause havoc along the Atlantic coast.

The NHL awarded Chicago a franchise for the 1926-27 season with new owner Frederic McLaughlin in charge. McLaughlin purchased the WHL’s Portland Rosebuds, moved them to Chicago and renamed them. On Aug. 27, 1926, the Chicago Tribute newspaper announced the team would be called the Black Hawks.

“The name of the team was picked yesterday,” Chicago Tribune sports editor Don Maxwell wrote. “McLaughlin and his associates decided that the team should be called the Black Hawks. Uniforms will be symbolic of the name.”

McLaughlin chose the team name after serving in the U.S. Army’s 86th Infantry Division, which was nicknamed the Blackhawk Division after Sauk war leader Black Hawk. The division’s personnel were drawn from the Midwest, where the real Black Hawk had fought to defend his tribe and its land.

For the first 60 years of their existence, they were known as the Black Hawks — spelled as two different words. But in 1986, they officially switched to Blackhawks.

It took almost three months for the NHL team in Colorado to get its nickname after relocating from Quebec City in the summer of 1995. When Denver originally had an NHL team from 1976-1982, they were called the Colorado Rockies. However, that name had since been adopted by the city’s MLB team in 1993.

There was a lot of speculation about the potential name, with the Denver Post going as far as reporting the relocated team from Quebec City would be called the Rocky Mountain Extreme. However, that name was met with a lot of resistance in the market.

In the end, fans were allowed to vote from a list of eight proposed names: Avalanche, Black Bears, Rapids, Cougars, Outlaws, Renegades, Storm and Wranglers.

“We received over 10,000 responses and Avalanche was slightly ahead of Black Bears and Cougars,” Colorado’s vice president of marketing Shawn Hunter said on Aug. 10, 1995.

Columbus didn’t enter the NHL until the 2000-01 season, but they had the team’s nickname lined up three years in advance.

On Nov. 7, 1997, the Columbus Dispatch reported the new NHL team would be known as the Blue Jackets. That name was chosen from the submissions gathered by more than 13,000 fans who participated in a name-the-team contest. The nickname Justice was reportedly the runner-up.

However, the Blue Jackets name officially refers to Union soldiers of the Civil War. And when the franchise officially announced the name, they said it was “celebrating patriotism, pride and the rich Civil War history in the state of Ohio and, more specifically, the city of Columbus.”

The Minnesota North Stars relocated to Dallas for the 1993-94 season.

The club simply dropped “North” from its name and was immediately called the Dallas Stars. It was an easy and simple solution, considering that Texas is known as the “Lone Star State” and the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys are renowned for the giant star on their helmet.

In their first six seasons in the NHL, Detroit had two different team nicknames: the Cougars and Falcons.

But when James Norris purchased the team in 1932, he desired yet another re-branding. Norris wanted to pay homage to a Montreal-based amateur club he played for called the Winged Wheelers. He also thought it would be a natural tie-in for Detroit’s bustling automotive scene.

The Oilers joined the NHL in 1979-80, as part of a four-team merger with the WHA.

Original Edmonton owner Bill Hunter wrote in his autobiography that he chose the name Oilers, because Edmonton, Alberta is the center of Canada's petroleum industry.

“Edmonton was blue-collar, hard-working town, and I wanted to give the team a name fans could identify with,” Hunter wrote.

Florida owner Wayne Huizenga held a contest to name his new hockey team in 1993. The team received 6,400 submissions and “Panthers” emerged as the clear winner.

The team’s official news release in April of 1993 stated that a panther’s traits are “easily translated to those of an exciting hockey player. It is powerful, aggressive, quick, lithe and very much alive in spirit; qualities we want our hockey playing Panthers to possess.”

When the Panthers chose their name, the team also pledged to raise awareness about Florida’s endangered state animal.

In May of 1966, owner Jack Kent Cooke launched a contest to name Los Angeles’ new NHL franchise.

Following a fan contest to name the team, Cooke chose the name Kings because he wanted his club to take on "an air of royalty," and picked the original team colors of purple and gold because they were colors traditionally associated with royalty. However, they changed the purple and gold color scheme arrival of Wayne Gretzky to Los Angeles came new jerseys and a new color scheme. The Kings altered their main colors to black, white, and silver, to match the NFL's Raiders who were based in LA at the time. The new logo had a small “Los Angeles” atop a larger “Kings” with a smaller crown logo underneath the wordmark.

After losing the North Stars in 1993, Minnesota landed another NHL franchise for the 2000-01 season. The new club launched a contest to name the team in 1998, receiving roughly 13,000 submissions from fans.

The franchise narrowed down the choices to six finalists: Freeze, Northern Lights, Blue Ox, White Bears, Voyageurs and Wild.

They ultimately settled on Wild, but not without some push-back. The Canadian Wildlife Federation claimed that its children’s magazine held the trademark rights on the name “Wild” — causing a brief legal ruckus that was eventually settled.

Montreal got its team name in 1909, when founding owner John Ambrose O’Brien chose the name Club de Hockey Canadien (Canadian Hockey Club) to appeal to the Francophone population in Montreal.

The team’s jerseys still sport something closely resembling the original logo, with a stylized letter “C” emblazoned with an “H” in the middle. Many fans mistakenly believe that “H” in the middle of their logo stands for Habitants — or the popular nickname “Habs” — that is often associated with the team. However, that “H” stands for hockey, as part of Club de Hockey Canadien (Canadian Hockey Club). 

The “Habs” nickname first appeared in a Le Devoir newspaper on Feb. 9, 1914.

In addition to the Habs, the Canadiens are also widely known as le Tricolore (the tricolor), les Glorieux (the glorious), le Bleu Blanc et Rouge (the blue, white and red).

The team was named after the bones of a saber-toothed tiger found beneath a Nashville building. But the team isn't called the Tigers. They're called the Predators, which encompasses a whole plethora of hungry species.

On June 30, 1982, the team was renamed the New Jersey Devils, after the legend of the Jersey Devil, a creature that allegedly inhabited the Pine Barrens of South Jersey. Over 10,000 people voted in a contest held to select the name.

On Feb. 16, 1972 — the same day they announced Bill Torrey would be their inaugural general manager — New York’s newest hockey team also revealed they would be known as the Islanders. The name was a simple acknowledgment that they would be playing their games on Long Island, and an easy way to separate themselves from the Rangers, who played their home games in midtown Manhattan.

In 1926, the New York Americans were the toast of Manhattan’s hockey scene. But Madison Square Garden president George “Tex” Rickard quickly realized the market could support another NHL franchise.

So he started a second team, which was owned and operated by MSG itself. With two teams in the market, sportswriters in New York started dubbing this new club as “Tex’s Rangers” (a play on the phrase “Texas Rangers”).

Rickard loved the clever nickname and formally adopted it — printing the word “Rangers” in diagonal letters across the front of their jerseys.

When Ottawa returned to the NHL for the 1992-93 season, the franchise reincarnated the same name used by the Senators teams that captured four Stanley Cups in the 1920s.

The original Senators — who were considered the NHL’s first dynasty — were named because Ottawa was Canada’s capital city and home to federal institutions such as the Senate. But when the Senators returned after an almost 60-year hiatus in 1992, they introduced a Roman theme to their logo.

The team sponsored a name-the-team contest in 1966 after Ed Snider brought an NHL team to the City of Brotherly Love in 1966. Thousands of ballots were entered, with more than 100 people suggesting Flyers, a name originally put forth by Snider’s sister. The top prize was an RCA 21″ color television, with two season tickets for both the second- and third-prize winners, and a pair of single-game tickets for the next 100 winners.

The team held a naming contest with fans and on Feb. 9, 1967, the club announced Penguins had been selected from a field of more than 26,000 submissions. Roughly 700 of those submissions were for Penguins, with many believing it was a natural fit for a team that would be playing home games in an arena nicknamed “The Igloo.”

The new hockey team in San Jose didn’t limit suggestions for its NHL name to just the Bay Area in 1990. Instead, they held a worldwide contest to name the team, with the winning bid securing a pair of tickets to the 1991 NHL All-Star Game in Chicago. They received submissions from across the United States, Canada and even a suggestion from someone living in Italy.

The wide net yielded more than 2,300 suggestions for a team name. Some of the quirky ones included the likes of Rubber Puckies, Screaming Squids and Salty Dogs. One person even suggested calling them the Cansecos after Oakland A’s superstar Jose Canseco.

In the end, they settled on Sharks because the neighboring Pacific Ocean was home to seven different varieties of sharks and they had a ferocious component the marketing department found appealing.

There was quite a bit of anticipation leading up to Seattle naming its NHL franchise in the summer of 2020.

And there was no shortage of options being tossed around by fans on social media. Names like the Emeralds, Metropolitans, Sockeyes, Steelheads and Totems all gained some traction.

But on July 23, 2020, the team announced it would be officially known as the Kraken.

Seattle’s logo and design pays homage to the Seattle Metropolitans, who were the first American-based team to capture the Stanley Cup in 1917.

“They are an eternal part of our city’s history and we pay tribute to them by wearing the ‘S.’ We will aspire to bring the Cup back to Seattle in their honor,” the team said of the new Kraken logo.

The club also chose a legendary sea monster as its name given its proximity to the water.

“A single tentacle stealthily rises from below, symbolizing the deep, dark waters of Puget Sound. How many are there? How deep do they go?” the club said in a statement explaining the name and logo. “The real peril lies in what you don’t see.”

Prior to joining the NHL in the 1992-93 season, the Tampa Bay management team was considering a whole host of names for the franchise courtesy of a fan contest.

The finalists were said to include names such as Oceanics, Gators and Pelicans. But it turns out the whole thing was a futile exercise because inaugural general manager Phil Esposito knew the team name all along. Before they were even awarded an expansion franchise, Esposito was attending a barbecue at the home of a local Tampa lawyer named Bennie Lazzara in the summer of 1990.

It doesn’t hurt that the Tampa Bay area is often considered the lightning capital of North America, with more lightning strikes than other places on the continent.

Esposito also stated he liked the uniqueness of the Lightning name, which didn’t look or sound like other teams in the NHL.

“I wanted to be different,” added Esposito. “Everybody else was the Bruins, the Rangers, the (Black)Hawks, the Red Wings. This was Lightning, no S.”

Upon joining the NHL for its inaugural season in 1917, Toronto’s team was named the Arenas. They switched to the St. Patricks for the 1919-20 season, but they made yet another change in the 1926-27 season.

One question has lingered about the team’s name for decades: Why is it Maple Leafs and not Maple Leaves?

Maple Leaf is a proper noun, and thus the plural is Maple Leafs, not Maple Leaves. In English, proper nouns have regular “-s” plurals, even if the word in question normally has an irregular plural.

Utah’s new NHL team has a major decision on its hands.

The Utah Hockey Club became a team for the 2024-25 season, after the Arizona Coyotes decided to relocate due to lack of the facility they were playing in. The naming of a hockey franchise can help define a team’s identity for generations. New owner Ryan Smith seems to inherently understand the importance of this decision, opting to take his time to ensure they get the name right. The plan is for the team to play its inaugural season in 2024-25 under the Utah banner, allowing them enough runway to properly choose a name and logo.

Last week, Smith said they would launch a March Madness-style bracket and allow hockey fans in Utah to vote amongst eight legitimate nicknames.

What Utah is doing here isn’t exactly unique.

Canuck is both slang for Canadian and a reference to Johnny Canuck, a Canadian political cartoon character in 1869. More famously, Johnny Canuck made a return as a comic book action hero during World War II where his character who fought Adolf Hitler. Johnny Canuck was seen as Canada’s answer to Captain America and Uncle Sam — a cartoon character who promoted patriotism.

According to the club website, Johnny Canuck has been adopted, unofficially, by the Canucks as a second team mascot and alternate logo.

In 1970, Vancouver was awarded an NHL expansion franchise and opted to stick with the Canucks name.

Vegas owner Bill Foley had his fingerprints all over the name of his new NHL franchise.

Foley, who graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, wanted to call his new NHL team the Black Knights. But he received quite a bit of resistance to that potential name.

The NHL also wanted the new team to steer away from any gambling-related references in the nickname.

Finally, in November of 2016, Foley unveiled the name Vegas Golden Knights, in front of 5,000 fans outside of T-Mobile Arena.

“Our logo and our name are really going to exhibit the highest element of the warrior class — the knight,” Foley exclaimed to the cheering onlookers. “The knight protects the unprotected. The knight defends the realm. The knight never gives up, never gives in, always advances, never retreats. And that is what our team is going to be.”

In January of 1974, Washington owner Abe Pollin launched a contest to name his new NHL franchise that would start playing in the 1974-75 season.

Moreover, the Pollins both thought the Capitals had a good, solid ring to it. Since Washington is the captial of the United States. 88 people sent “Capitals” in as their suggestion for the naming contest (as opposed to the 250 who liked the Comets), so all of their names were pooled together, and one drawn for the season tickets.

“We think we have come up with a great name,” Pollin said at the news conference. “It wasn’t until 11:30 last night that my wife and I came up with the final name. It was unanimous.”

When the Atlanta Thrashers announced they were going to relocate to Winnipeg, people were happy. The original Jets were a WHA powerhouse in the 1970s, before merging with the NHL prior to the 1979-80 season. In 1996, the Winnipeg Jets relocated to Phoenix, to become the Phoenix Coyotes.

Winnipeg has been home to a Royal Canadian Air Force base since 1925, making it one of the oldest Air Force bases in Canada. The original WHA team owner Ben Hatskin was reportedly a fan of the New York Jets and named his hockey team after the NFL squad.