The NHL’s newest franchise will be known as the Seattle Kraken, the team announced Thursday.
Seattle is unleashing the Kraken.
Nearly 20 months after the NHL announced it had approved a Seattle expansion team, the new franchise announced its new name and unveiled a logo on Thursday.
“We met deposit day with 32,000 passionate fans and scores of prospective team names,” the team announced on its website. “One in particular emerged quickly as the frontrunner. Two years later, and that same name still carries the conversation. 215,000 fan votes, 50+ fan forums & speaking engagements and over 12 months of social media listening have supported this phenomenon—Seattle is the Kraken.”
The then-unnamed franchise teased the name announcement Wednesday evening with a promotional video embracing Seattle’s fishing industry. In it, a trio aboard a fishing boat pulls a goal light from the water, which lights up as a nearby ship blares its horn.
The team also unveiled an “S” primary logo that features a tentacle shape.
“Our history in the great ice game goes as deep as Puget Sound,” the team explained. “The Seattle Metropolitans were the first American club to hoist the Stanley Cup. They are an eternal part of our city’s history and we pay tribute to them by wearing the ‘S.’ We will aspire to bring the Cup back to Seattle in their honor.”
Though the ultimate choice was the Kraken, there were a dozen other options on the table. After the expansion team was announced in late 2018, the team’s ownership group registered trademarks for 13 potential names. Bovada oddsmakers made the Totems the favorite, at -105.
Other candidates included: the Emeralds (+400), Rainiers (+700), Sockeyes (+700), Kraken (+700) and Renegades (+1200). A quintet of names was listed with the longest odds (+2800): Evergreens, Whales, Cougars, Eagles and Firebirds.
Professional hockey in Seattle goes back to 1915, when the Seattle Metropolitans played in the Pacific Coast Hockey League. The team won the Stanley Cup in 1917—the first American-based team to do so—but folded in 1924. The city had a minor league team, the Seattle Totems, from 1944 to 1975, when the Western Hockey League shut down.
In October 2018, the Seattle Times published a reader poll to determine the most popular of the team’s potential new names that garnered over 100,000 votes. The Sockeyes received the most votes, beating out the Totems in the final round (37,543 votes to 30,140).
