The tentative names of the “Original Six” teams for the Professional Women’s Hockey League have been revealed to be disappointing, pointing to a dire need for original and expressive logos and branding.

The Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) has yet to reveal the new team names. However, PWHL Holdings, LLC, the PWHL’s trademarking system, filed six trademark applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on Oct. 26 for “Toronto Torch,” “New York Sound,” “Minnesota Superior,” “Ottawa Alert,” “Montreal Echo” and “Boston Wicked.” While these names are not necessarily the final ones, the trademark is indelible proof of the direction the teams will go, and it is not good. These yet-to-be team names, with one exception, fail to provide the robust, iconic branding needed to propel the PWHL to the multinational spotlight it deserves.

The issue with most of these names is twofold: locality-specific imagery and what it evokes. Hockey is a physical sport, not only in the physical activity taking place in-between and after whistles, but in team branding; where soccer has clubs, and basketball has abstract team branding, professional hockey typically sticks to clear, concise identity and mascot imagery. Most professional hockey teams are “things,” and not only are several of the PWHL teams abstract; they are not necessarily tied to the teams’ residency, and even evoke negative connotations. 

Montreal’s branding is especially awful, as an echo is not easily portrayed pictorially, and connotes a byproduct of something, letting down a future team meant to inaugurate the highest-caliber women’s hockey league in North America, let alone in one of the most hockey-devout cities. Montreal has nothing to do with echoes and no one wants to be called as such, especially not in the city whose love of hockey is so ubiquitous that its National Hockey League (NHL) team is a metonymically tied to the whole country’s national identity. 

Toronto’s PWHL team name is equally tragic, conjuring fire and burning in association with a city impacted heavily by wildfire smoke pollution this summer.

Ottawa’s franchise suffers from too closely following tradition; The Ottawa Alert highlights the phrase “red alert,” and this imagery is to be expected of a city whose many hockey teams in differing leagues and skill levels each have red as their main color, including the Senators in the NHL and the 67’s, a major junior team in the Ontario Hockey League; even teams that do not play in Ottawa proper, but are within the Senators organization, like the Belleville (formerly Binghamton) Senators in the American Hockey League (AHL) follow this tradition. The Ottawa Alerts were previously a women’s club operating from 1915-1930, and this new naming heavily mimics the 1992 revival of the Ottawa Senators from the original 1883-1954 Ottawa Hockey Club. Unlike Minnesota’s team that cleverly plays off Lake Superior’s proximity, it is unclear how a revived Alerts team will be branded, as the original colors were black and yellow, “alerts” are not Ottawa-specific and that team predates logos or complex jersey designs entirely. 

This reliance on previous branding is seen best, or worst, in the New York Sound. The team’s branding will likely reference a pun on music like the NHL’s St. Louis Blues, but the parallel pun on the Long Island Sound draws closely to the New York Islanders. The color scheme and logo, while not revealed, may well be replicas of the Islanders: likely blue, white and orange and featuring a silhouette of the sound.

Boston Wicked is by far the clear runaway among the six names. Not only does it tie locality and distinct imagery together, recalling Salem, Massachusetts and Halloween-esque themes like witches, it can provide a nod to the NHL’s Boston Bruins through a dark color scheme without wholly tying its identity to already-existing imagery, like New York’s Sound-Islanders connection. Wicked will likely be branded with black jerseys with yellow, purple or bright green highlights, and its logo will, with near-certainty, involve a black cat or other Halloween character riding a hockey stick like a witch’s broom. In lieu of a Halloween logo, an evil-looking ursine mascot that provides a fresh companion to the Boston Bruins’ logo would also be acceptable. Of the six teams, Wicked proves the most hopeful for a recognizable and loveable team identity.

Aside from Boston, whose fans can likely barely contain their excitement, the PWHL team names let down fans of what will be the most exciting sports development in a couple of years. The official announcement is yet to come, but the likeness to some NHL identities, lack of locality-based imagery and reliance on abstractions point to a problem with team identities, and the PWHL must then have the most recognizable, distinctive logos possible to market an ever-expanding sport.

Photo by: Tony Schnagl via Pexels