Ranking NHL Utah's Logos For Three Potential Names: 'They Look Like EA NHL Logo Options'

Out of NHL Utah's three logos presented to fans as part of its team name vote, one is easily the best right now.

The logos depicting three potential names for Utah's NHL team have a familiar feel.

They look like they came from EA Sports' NHL video game.

Daily Faceoff's Frank Seravalli confirmed three logos posted on Reddit on Monday were the ones presented to fans attending Utah Hockey Club home games over the past week. The team's surveying fans about which name and brand they like best until the end of Tuesday's game.

Each logo features the same color scheme as the squad's current, temporary look. The team calls them Rock Black, Salt White and Mountain Blue.

The fan vote is missing the Utah Yetis, which the team announced it wouldn't pursue further after failing to work out a co-existence trademark agreement with Yeti Coolers.

To begin the latest vote, the franchise had Utah Mammoth, Utah Hockey Club and Utah Wasatch. Wasatch was supposed to "honor the idea of a mythical snow creature with a Utah-centric approach inspired by the Wasatch Mountain range," according to the team's announcement. One day later, the team said that, based on feedback, it swapped out Wasatch for Outlaws in the survey.

The Hockey News' Michael DeRosa chose Outlaws as the best option for Utah's permanent nickname. Whether the logos affect the vote remains to be seen, but there's an argument that it could, considering how fitting one of them looks so far.

Here are the logos ranked from worst to best.

The Outlaws logo just doesn't strike enough attention as something that's uniquely Utah. And it should be, considering the state's history includes outlaws as folk heroes.

It feels more like what you'd find when creating a custom team in EA Sports' NHL 25, which has more than 150 simplistic logos with bold lines. Stick it alongside the menacing goalie mask, the devil, the Centurion and skulls, and it would fit right in. There's even a side-facing head with a bandana and cowboy hat already in the game.

The name is enticing, but relate it to something. At least the Vegas Golden Knights fit a 'V' in the negative space of the helmet in their primary logo. The Seattle Kraken have an 'S' logo to commemorate the Seattle Metropolitans. They also related the logo to the mythical sea creature under the Tacoma Bridge and the deep-water colors of Puget Sound.

That's not to assume the logo in the fan survey will 100-percent be the official logo if Outlaws gets chosen. It's a start, but it could use some Utah-specific details.

There's nothing wrong with it, necessarily. It's a side-facing mammoth that looks menacing.

But again, it fits right in with the bull, ram, sharks, elephant, rhinoceros, gorilla, wolves and more in NHL 25.

Mammoths were believed to roam the land that's now Utah more than 10,000 years ago. Paleontologists have found their bones in the state, including in Huntington Canyon, about a two-and-a-half-hour drive south of Salt Lake City. 

A mammoth skull or a mammoth in front of the Wasatch mountain range could elevate a fine logo into a memorable one.

The name isn't everybody's first choice or even their second. But that logo is a game-changer. Mainly because it looks like what the Utah Yetis could have been.

The Yetis name was the popular choice, but it couldn't work. That doesn't mean Utah can't use what it had in mind for the rest of the Yetis brand. They're already temporarily called the Utah Hockey Club, anyway.

It would have been interesting to pair that logo with Utah Wasatch since that name seemed like the franchise's attempt at its version of the Himalayan Yeti. But there are conflicting records about what Wasatch is derived from, one being more phallic than another. In either case, Utah HC is the fallback.

A mountain range appears in the head of the Yeti in this proposed logo. The state outline is the left-most mountain. It's by far the best "Utah" logo of the three. Is it so good to make up for a bland name?

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