NHL Utah's Year 1 Branding Has 'Yeti' Written All Over It – Just Not Literally
The Utah Hockey Club will play out of the Delta Center in Salt Lake City. Rob Gray-USA TODAY Sports
The Utah NHL team unveiled its colors and jersey name on Thursday, going with black, blue and white for its color scheme and Utah Hockey Club for its temporary team name.
Utah co-owner Ryan Smith has said for some time now the final team name for his NHL franchise won’t be locked in until the 2025-26 season, but let’s be honest here – 'Yeti' seems like an inevitable match for the Utah team.
Indeed, the smash-hit success of the Seattle Kraken is all the proof you need that fans will embrace a mythical character for their team’s name.
It doesn’t have to have any kind of realistic links to your city. It doesn’t need to be some safe choice that’s test-marketed to death. Instead, it’s about an organic response that clearly favors one name over all the rest. And that name is 'Yeti' (singular name preferred to 'Yetis').
Certainly, some people make it clear they don’t like the Yeti name. But you also can’t please everyone. And anecdotally, there’s nobody I personally know of who isn’t a fan of the Yeti as Utah’s name. It’s fun, it’s memorable, and it’s something that will resonate even with non-hockey fans.
The Utah Hockey Club should do away with the test marketing and just go with Yeti, even if it takes the group months to find a graphic designer to create an appealing long-term logo and uniform set. For now, the colors revealed this week and the Yeti name would be enough to start the 2024-25 season.
Even the color names, "Rock Black, Salt White and Mountain Blue," suggest potential Yeti branding. It drew comparisons to the former WHL Kootenay and Winnipeg Ice, which had a Yeti logo as well, but Utah will have every opportunity to develop something that's its own from the popular name choice.
This isn't a case where the Yeti name could age poorly, either. Some professional sports teams have erred over the years and named their organization after something that proves to be politically incorrect, forcing them to change it.
Yeti would be a choice that will last generations, and it’s the best idea Utah is going to get. So let’s just settle on that name and build the brand from there. Anything else is delaying the inevitable.
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