NHL Seattle settles on fictitious sea creature
SEATTLE — Seattle’s incoming NHL franchise has picked “Kraken” as its team name, eschewing more traditional options and going with a moniker that generated some of the most heated debates among local fans.
The fictitious sea creature — a type of giant squid — was first mentioned in an Alfred Lord Tennyson sonnet from 1830 and later popularized in two 1953 books by Michael Joseph and John Wyndham. It later landed in some Hollywood movies, including the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise produced by current NHL Seattle owner Jerry Bruckheimer.
The team, which opens play at Climate Pledge Arena in October 2021, becomes the first men’s professional sports franchise in Seattle to not end with the letter “s” — following in the footsteps of the women’s pro WNBA Storm and NWSL Reign.
“The Kraken is a name born of the fans,” NHL Seattle CEO Tod Leiweke said in announcing the widely-anticipated decision at a Thursday morning news conference at the site of what was formerly KeyArena. “It was suggested and championed by the fans.”
Leiweke said the team has launched a website selling “Release The Kraken!” merchandise with all profits going to local nonprofits YouthCare, the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle and Community Passageways.
In an interview after the announcement, Leiweke said: “We considered everything. And many of the names had plusses and many had minuses. But at the end of the day, like an endearing friend, this name just kept hanging in there.”
The team had to work out trademark
agreements on the name with several commercial entities, including Kraken Rum — which has agreed to become the official rum sponsor of the new team.
“I think the mythology of the Kraken is going to be really interesting,” NHL Seattle minority owner Mitch Garber, a member of the executive committee that selected the name, said in an interview Thursday. “Especially in an arena that’s being dug more than 50 feet below the ground. I think it
will be really, really interesting for the fans.”
The official NHL Seattle Twitter account changed to a Seattle Kraken name on Thursday with a bio that reads: “Now that we have a name, we’re strategizing all the ways to draft your favorite player.”
The team also unveiled its new logo and team colors, which involve three types of blue — described as “Deep Sea Navy,” “Ice Blue” and “Shadowy Blue” — as well as a splash of red it calls “Red Alert.” The colors, worked on with Adidas, were inspired by those worn by the Seattle Metropolitans
of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association from 19151924.
“We went through a lot of iterations with Adidas,” Garber said. “The colors are quite unique. You’ll see a bit of the Mariners and a bit of the Seahawks. There are no teams in the NHL — I think Edmonton has one jersey that has this type of blue in it — that have this as their main colors. But there are seven teams in the NHL that have the same red. So, it was kind of difficult to go in that direction.”
Garber said the team “did go through many colors
that were totally foreign to Seattle sports” before landing on these. He noted added the colors should go well with the “environmental aspect” of the newly-named arena, though he admitted the team had no idea what that name would be when final decision on the logo was made.
Garber said the team went through a “really long process” of eliminating names from the process and investigating trademark conflicts before arriving at a decision he feels will represent the “maritime history” of the region.