The PWHL’s first season featured six squads that had everything but a traditional nickname and logo. Now, by popular demand, those teams are skating into season two with distinct game-changing identities. What’s in a name? You’re about to find out.
On Thursday, with the PWHL season still months away, the internet ice hockey forums were on fire. The league and each of the league’s six teams, which played their first season without traditional team nicknames, had changed their social avatars to black and white.
Immediately, the comment sections that had been peppered with pleading posts—“Give us the names,” “When will we get the logos??” and “Names, please” —began brimming with anticipation and OMG-level excitement. As one Montréal fan immediately posted: “pwhl team accounts are changing their pfp IS IT FINALLY HAPPENING ????” The reason to rejoice wasn’t simply that the arrival of team nicknames was imminent, but what that meant: the PWHL’s hockey-hungry fans had been heard.
Even before the puck dropped on its inaugural season, the league had begun responding to its most passionate supporters’ most urgent request. “The fans told us loud and clear they want team names,” says Amy Scheer, the league’s Senior Vice President of Business Operations. “That’s the mission they put us on.”
And now, mission accomplished: Earlier today on Good Morning America and Breakfast Television in Canada, the league proudly introduced new names and striking visual identities for its six teams: Meet the Boston Fleet, the Minnesota Frost, the Montréal Victoire, the New York Sirens, the Ottawa Charge, and the Toronto Sceptres.
Without question, this was an emotional moment for the PWHL. Beyond marketing and merchandise, the new identities have the potential to make their impact felt in every arena, on both sides of the glass. “Whether you’re a player or a fan, you want a name to connect with who you are and what your city is,” says Hockey Hall of Famer Jayna Hefford, the PWHL’s Senior Vice President of Hockey Operations. “You want to be proud about representing that name. It becomes your identity.”
That emotional power raised the stakes on an already pressure-packed naming process. “When you’ve got 150 of the best women’s players in the world and 50-plus Olympians, you have to try to produce something at the level of the hockey we put on the ice,” says Scheer. “We hope fans feel these names are at that level. This was a really challenging project, but it was a labor of love.”
As they mapped out the criteria for a name, league executives knew one was truly mission-critical. “The heart of our efforts was to capture the soul of each city and its people,” says Kanan Bhatt-Shah, the league’s VP of Brand and Marketing, who oversaw the league’s naming process. Beyond that, she adds, each name “has to feel big and powerful—it can’t feel small. It has to be able to stand the test of time, take on a life of its own, and accommodate every possible expression of the brand. It has to evoke a feeling of pride in place, community and self.”
To begin this monumental effort – six powerful, distinctive team identities developed in under a year – the league chose a creative partner mirroring its own young, scrappy vibe: Flower Shop, the New York-based agency recently named Newcomer Small Agency of the Year by Ad Age. Although the firm is two years old, its creative team brought an extensive depth and breadth of experience in sports, creating and evolving brands such as Adidas, Fanatics, Nike, and Wrexham AFC.
This project’s ambitions were key to its appeal. “I don’t think this brief is going to come around again,” says Alistair Merry, Flower Shop’s co-founder and Chief Creative Officer. “We weren’t just trying to find a name; we set out to create a brand for each team.” Presented with an accelerated timeline in order to have team identities in place ahead of season two,, the PWHL and Flower Shop teams remained undaunted. There was less than a year to complete identities for the league’s six teams, about half the time most professional teams devote to developing just one, but this would not be a rush job. “We knew the importance of it. We felt it,” Merry explains. “We had a deadline, but we took the time, care, and craft to get this right.”
The league and agency embarked on the process ready to absorb meaningful insights from a passionate group of constituents. Intent on listening to players, staff, and, most of all, fans, conversational interviews were key to garnering valuable insights – as was soaking up the game experience across all teams and analyzing sports team names in each city at every level and in every sport. Aspects of each team’s distinct personality were uncovered as the season continued, which were then layered into the identity development process.
Fans came out in droves, at games, events and on social media to support their favorite team and the league – and they didn’t hold back in tossing names for consideration into the mix. “We had a unique opportunity in our inaugural season to watch our fans, in concert with our players, help create meaning and a sense of identity around each team throughout the season,” says Ali Bologna, the league’s Director of Marketing. “We were then able to capture the essence of that sense of identity and use that as building blocks for these distinctive team brands.”
After mining these insights, an initial set of idea lists containing every name suggested by fans, players, and staff was developed, as well as territories brainstormed by Flower Shop. That was followed by targeted ideation. “The name generation approach was quality, not quantity,” says Merry. “There were strict criteria to hit.” In addition to connecting deeply with its home market and fanbase, each name had to be distinctive and easy to grasp, project pride and power, and be enduring. The name also needed to serve as a rich jumping off point for endless visual and creative possibilities. Bhatt-Shah says, “In evaluating each potential name, we asked ourselves ‘how would our players and fans embrace this name and build a sense of community around it?’ That was incredibly important to us.”
The road to selecting the final names passed through the league attorneys’ offices, as legal red flags and copyright concerns knocked out a number of options in an arduous, painstaking process to ensure the final name for each team could be ownable in both the U.S. and Canada. The final six names selected met the rigorous criteria, best represented their teams and fans and were cleared from a trademark perspective.
Nothing was final, however, until the name was translated into visuals. The truest test of a logo design is if that outward expression of the name can spark something inside. “The mark of any great sports logo is that it’s a badge of pride,” says Merry, who oversaw Flower Shop’s design process. “You want people to wear it. You want people to get tattoos of it. You want people to fall in love with it.” Next, the design had to work within sport-specific constraints. “We had to think about the unwritten rules of hockey branding—the logos are the centerpiece,” Merry adds. “We couldn’t design a logo in a vacuum.” Finally, the logo had to be stitched into sweaters and jerseys, blown up on billboards, as appliqué on hats, and as animation on everything from scoreboards to smartphones.
Then came the team colors, which work off the palettes used in season one, and typography choices, which went through a similar series of tests and tweaks. Continuing to hero each team’s primary color for season one in the new team color palettes was a non-negotiable. “We wanted to ensure that our fans who were with us since the league was born could continue to sport their season one gear with pride and feel that sense of connection with their home team. The primary colors from our inaugural season held powerful equity and we didn’t want to lose that,” explains Bhatt-Shah.
Ultimately, the six identities chosen are, by design, as distinctive and unique as the teams and cities they represent. Introducing them to the world together represented a leap forward for the league. “It gives us another moment to be proud about who we are, what we stand for, and the work we’re doing,” Scheer notes. “As our league evolves, there will be more big moments, but this one, to me, is a game changer because your identity means everything. We hope fans appreciate them the same way they appreciate and love our players.”
After today, the league may own the trademarks, but these team identities belong to the fans. Scheer says she’ll get emotional when she hears the names chanted in arenas. Hefford expects she’ll choke up when she sees her son and his PWHL-obsessed friends wearing the new logoed gear. Moreover, she can’t wait to see supporters get creative with their identities. “Hopefully, fans will really run with this and make the name and game experience their own. It’s for them.”
Mascot ideas, anyone?
