Now
73
Sat
89
Sun
87
by Matthew Jacobson, KUTV
TOPICS:
SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — The Utah Hockey Club is now a thing of the past.
The Beehive State's NHL team is now officially the Utah Mammoth, one of the not-so-well-kept secrets of the Smith Entertainment Group-owned franchise, thanks to a brief snafu on the team's YouTube page, which jumped the gun on renaming the handle to @utahmammoth about a week prior. It wasn't live for long, but it was long enough for the internet to get ahold of the screenshots. The team quickly deactivated its YouTube page following the name change.
The news of the official name dropped Wednesday morning when an announcement video was shared on the team's X account, which sported the new name but still had the old @utahhockeyclub as of the publish time of this report.
The team pulled the trigger at 8 a.m. on the announcement, and the Mammoth's home rink at the Delta Center was immediately adorned with banners sporting the brand-new logo, featuring the right-facing Mountain Mammoth. Emerging from its skull is graphic representation of the Wasatch Mountains, reminiscent of the mountains in the Utah Jazz logo from 1996 – 2016. The tusk that completes the mammoth's ever-so-angry face forms the shape of a "U," and to drive home that state spirit, a Utah shape is hidden in the image, as well.
The team also unveiled its new home- and away-game jerseys, with the Mammoth home-rink uniforms sporting the players' names and numbers in Salt White, outlined in Mountain Blue, on a Rock Black background. For away games, the colors are inverted — Rock Black identifiers over a Salt White jersey with Rock Black and Mountain Blue stripes.
The Mammoth jerseys will be available to purchase in one week, starting at noon May 17. However, the first round of official, non-jersey merchandise is available at noon Wednesday.
And like the Utah Jazz's signature hashtag, #TakeNote, the Mammoth introduced its own social media rallying cry: #TusksUp.
The name was chosen following a community-driven campaign to determine the final logo and mascot, with a mid-process amendment to the name options.
Originally, SEG put it to the people of Utah to decide if the NHL team would be, with a bevy of choices available, including the Blizzard, the Black Diamonds, the Outlaws, the Wasatch, and, of course, the Mammoth. But none of them got as much traction as one of the options: the Yeti.
Yeti came out as a clear winner both in the hockey team's polls and in polls conducted by KUTV. However, SEG ran up against a trademark issue. The problem: There was already a registered trademark for Yeti Coolers, a company that also had trademarks for clothes. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office determined the two were too similar to coexist and denied Utah its application for the name.
With the fan favorite gone, and with some negative feedback on a few others, the options were eventually narrowed down to a choice between Mammoth and the Wasatch. The third option was to keep the name as it was: The Utah Hockey Club.
In KUTV polls, viewers preferred Wasatch over Mammoths.
"When it came to naming the team, we did something unprecedented – going through four rounds of community voting, including getting feedback not only on potential names but also on potential logos," according to a statement from SEG founders Ryan and Ashley Smith. "We love the passion of the people of Utah and the way they showed up for the team during its inaugural season and the energy they brought to voting on its permanent identity."
This report is currently being written. Refresh or check back later for the latest addition.
__________
