Utah’s NHL team has narrowed the field down to six potential names for its hockey team.
On Wednesday, Smith Entertainment Group (SEG) announced it was launching the second round of its survey process to help select the name of Utah’s new NHL franchise. The first round of voting yielded six clear favorites that have advanced to the next phase. According to the hockey team, these six names are still alive in the process:
• Utah Blizzard
• Utah Hockey Club (Utah HC)
• Utah Mammoth
• Utah Outlaws
• Utah Venom
• Utah Yeti
More than a half million fans voted in the first round of the survey process, which included 20 potential nicknames for Utah’s NHL team. According to SEG, the six names above accounted for 60 percent of the total votes.
The 14 names that did not advance in the process included: Black Diamonds, Blast, Canyons, Caribou, Freeze, Frost, Fury, Glaciers, Hive, Ice, Mountaineers, Powder, Squall and Swarm.
The second round of voting — in which fans can only choose one of those six options — will close on June 20. In the initial voting process, fans were invited to choose up to four potential names from the list of 20 options.
Fans are only permitted to vote once in this process, with the guidelines stating that Qualtrics — which is team owner Ryan Smith’s company — ensuring there is a “prevention of ballot box stuffing.” The club also previously stated that “backend analysis will also include deduplication and best practice statistical methods to ensure data integrity.”
The club has already confirmed they will wear jerseys that simply display the word “Utah” on the front during their first season in Salt Lake City this fall. After the voting process has completed, club officials say they will “work diligently to craft the team identity — logo, mascot, and other branding elements.” That should all be in place in time for the 2025-26 season.
Upon launching the contest last month, SEG stated this would be a “multi-phase branding process for fans to vote on the name.”
“Utah’s NHL team is a community asset, and we want to make sure that the community has a say in what the name is,” Smith said in a statement on Wednesday.
Earlier this spring, Smith told The Athletic that choosing the name for the team is something he believed was vitally important to establishing a connection with the community in Utah and Salt Lake City.
“It’s got to be something that drives people to want to be a part of it, from all ages. It’s got to be a momentum builder,” Smith said. “The sky is the limit on this one. We’re going to have to approve it and the league would have to approve it.”
(Photo: Chris Gardner / Getty Images)
