Utah's NHL Franchise Keeps Trying to Steal Colorado Names

Are you worried that Colorado isn’t cool anymore? Well, Utah clearly still thinks so. As our neighbors to the west decide on the permanent name of their new National Hockey League team, all but one option has already been used by a Colorado sports team.

According to Utah fan votes at home games from January 31 through February 4, the three top options to name the team are the Utah Mammoth, Utah Outlaws and Utah Hockey Club, which the is the team's current name. However, the Colorado Mammoth is a National Lacrosse League team owned by the Kroenke family, while the Denver Outlaws are a Premier Lacrosse League team playing on the University of Denver Campus.

To make matters worse, the Utah Hockey Club, Mammoth and Outlaws only became options after the team failed to broker an agreement with YETI Coolers that would have allowed the team to be named the Yeti. Howler the Yeti was the original mascot of the Colorado Avalanche when the team moved from Canada to Colorado, and a bigfoot footprint has served as an alternate logo for the Avs over the years.

Images leaked by NHL insider Frank Seravalli show the Utah Hockey Club’s proposed logo is still a Yeti-like creature.

Colorado is clearly a trendsetter among square-ish states in the middle of the country, but these blatant acts of copy beg the question: Why is Utah trying to steal our team names?

The team’s short history is sort of built on taking, given that the club moved to Utah at the beginning of the 2024-2025 NHL season after Utah Jazz owners Ryan and Ashley Smith bought the Arizona Coyotes. The Coyotes were only for sale because owner Alex Meruelo had tried and failed to find a new place for the team to play after the city of Glendale, Arizona, decided not to renew the team’s lease at Gila River Arena. (To move the team, the NHL bought the Coyotes then sold the franchise to the Smiths, so Meruelo could still technically have the option to restart the Coyotes at some point.)

The announcement was made in April 2024 and the NHL season started in October, so things had to move quickly. The new team playing in Salt Lake City has been playing under the Utah Hockey Club moniker this season while surveying fans about what they’d like to see as the team’s new name.

Ryan asked people to submit names on X last summer. From there, twenty names were picked and 750,000 fan votes were cast to pick a top six. Nominees that didn’t make it through to the top six included the Canyons, Frost, Freeze, Swarm, Glaciers, Powder, Ice, Fury, Mountaineers, Hive, Squall, Caribou, Blast and Black Diamonds.

The top six options selected by fans last June were the Yeti, Outlaws, Mammoth, Hockey Club, Venom and Blizzard. (Side note: Blizzard also sounds very similar to Avalanche.)

This time around, fans who attended games got to weigh in on a top three, which were originally Mammoth, Hockey Club and Wasatch, a Utah mountain range. According to the team, Wasatch was included as a compromise after YETI Coolers said it wouldn’t allow the team to infringe on its trademark.

The idea was that the team could still use a “mythical snow creature” as its mascot, but after fans voted at the January 29 home game, team executives realized no one was interested in Wasatch as a name, so they swapped Hockey Club back in for the remaining three games of voting.

“The voting at this stage of the process will only be done in-arena.” Smith Entertainment Group executive Mike Maughan explains in a team press release. “We’re doing that because this time we’re including names and potential logos with them. ...Because of the logos, we’re doing this only in-arena and not showing those publicly so that we can protect those images.”

But Servalli ended up sharing the images with the public, anyway.

Can confirm these are the official logos that have been presented to @utahhockeyclub fans as part of their team name vote.

Now that you’ve seen them, which one would you vote for? pic.twitter.com/TRVb5w1xxq

— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) February 3, 2025

To Utah’s credit, the proposed graphics don’t resemble any of the Colorado team logos; the Colorado Mammoth use a stylized letter M and the Outlaws use a barbed wire fence segment, while the Utah versions are a mammoth itself and a guy in a cowboy hat and bandit mask. Even the Yeti-esque Hockey Club logo kind of looks like a saber-tooth tiger and differs from the Avs footprint version.

Still, it’s hard to get past the literal lacrosse team names being options. Coloradans can take it as a compliment and chalk the copycatting up to the old adage, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” Or, we can choose to big-brother the Utah team, which is currently eleven points behind the Avs in the standings. And until Utah wins three Stanley Cups, the Avs can lord that over the baby-faced team, too.

Utah is set to reveal the permanent team name before the start of the 2025-2026 NHL season. Let’s hope they give Colorado credit for the great ideas — or kick the new rivalry up a notch, at least

The Mammoth and KSE, the Outlaws and Utah Hockey Club did not reply to requests for comment.