Final Thoughts on Utah Mammoth

The NHL’s Utah franchise made their new name official on Wednesday: Utah Mammoth.

The name was originally seemingly leaked at the end of April. when Utah Hockey Club’s YouTube handle temporarily switched to @UtahMammoth. It was one of three finalist names announced as part of in-arena polling earlier this year.

As far as names go, I’d prefer Utah Mammoths, but Mammoth isn’t the worst singular noun name in sports by a long shot.

The team’s new logo blends mountain peaks with a mammoth head. I don’t think it looks bad but, to me, it kind of feels like it’s doing too much. It’s also not aimed at me – I’m not a Utah hockey fan – so whatever.

My big takeaway from Utah’s name search is how remarkable it was to follow a branding effort that largely took place in the trademark space.

Before Utah’s franchise was formally announced, I talked a bit about how, in the past, we’ve been able to track potential team names via domain registrations and how I didn’t think that would be the case this time around. Instead of domains, a week after I posted that, we started to see trademark applications seemingly-related to the team come in.

And then we saw more applications. And then even more.

Eventually there were over twenty potential names. And eventually every single application was rejected for one reason or another.

Most of those were procedural issues. Paperwork. And while none of that was insurmountable, it felt a little like a self-own.

The early front-runner, Utah Yetis, was eliminated due to conflict with Yeti Coolers. After having seen the Vegas Golden Knights dodge a conflict with the US Army’s Golden Knights parachute team and the AHL’s Coachella Valley Firebirds work out a deal with the OHL’s Flint Firebirds, it was something of a surprise that the Utah organization couldn’t manage the same with Yeti Coolers.

Instead, the three finalists were announced as Utah Hockey Club (retaining their “temporary” name), Utah Mammoth, and Utah Wasatch. Wasatch was sold as a Yeti-like creature but no one was buying it and it was almost immediately swapped out for Utah Outlaws.

In the meantime, the organization filed for extensions to fix some of their trademark applications and let others expire. Given that they had already announced finalists, the applications that they let expire didn’t really tell us anything. It was much like the run-up to the Vegas announcement, when we knew it was going to be <something> Knights but didn’t know whether it would be Golden Knights, Silver Knights, or Desert Knights (or whether the place name would be “Las Vegas” or “Vegas”).

Then came the tease, followed by the formal announcement.

And here we are.

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There is (at least) one thing that I was wrong about throughout this process.

In addition to the Utah organization’s trademark application, there was another, earlier, application for the name Utah Yetis. This one was filed by Wasatch Sports Group and published for opposition in April 2024.

The application was seemingly acquired by Smith Entertainment Group (or someone representing them) in May 2024. It was never formally opposed by Yeti Coolers and was later abandoned. I’d wondered why they abandoned it when Yeti Coolers wasn’t opposing it. It seemed like another self-own.

What I’d missed was that Yeti Coolers applied for multiple extensions on their right to oppose that application. It’s likely that, during that extended timeframe, negotiations were ongoing.

I should have seen that sooner as it’s what happened when I attempted to trademark DetroitHockey.Net’s previous logo and Major League Baseball stepped in. They never formally opposed the application, they just extended their option to do so and then contacted us, letting us know that if we tried to continue they’d smack us down.