Seattle Finally Announces Nickname

The Seattle NHL franchise, the league’s 32nd team, will be known as the Seattle Kraken. The franchise announced the name earlier today in an event at the Climate Pledge Arena, their being-renovated “new” home.

The franchise, which will begin play in 2021-22, also unveiled their team colors and home (dark) uniforms.

The name “Kraken” comes from Norse mythology. It is said to be a large sea beast that lurks beneath the North Atlantic Ocean off of Greenland and Norway.

What, exactly, does that have to do with Seattle, Washington, a city firmly located in the North Pacific, about 3,000 miles away from the Atlantic Ocean? Well, one of their co-owners is film producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who produced the Pirates of the Caribbean movie series for Disney. The second film in that series, Dead Man’s Chest, featured a Kraken as a main plot device.

Hey, that’s the best I could do, OK?

Anyway, the team colors are “deep sea blue” as their primary and then “ice blue,” “shadow blue,” “boundless blue” and “red alert” as their secondary colors.

The logo features a lone “S” in a nod to the Seattle Metropolitans, the Pacific Coast Hockey Association team that became the first American team to win the Stanley Cup. They defeated the Montreal Canadiens in 1917 prior to the formation of the NHL itself.

The logo is kind of an Olde English style “S,” similar to the Chicago White Sox logo in Major League Baseball. The “S” features a red eye at the top of it and a tentacle as part of the letter.

Their secondary logo is really cool. It features an anchor with the Seattle Space Needle forming the top of it. That will be worn as a patch on the shoulders of the jerseys.

The jerseys and logo were designed by the team with assistance from Adidas.

From now through August 21, according to an article on NHL.com by Nicholas J. Cotsonika, 100-percent “of net sale proceeds … from a bespoke line of merchandise” will be donated “to local nonprofits YouthCare, Community Passageways and the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle to help end youth homelessness and create positive pathways and opportunities for BIPOC youth in the Seattle area.”

You can go to releasethekrakenstore.com for more information.

Now, I was not really a fan of the name, as I thought it was a little bit goofy, but the logo really does away with that. The endless puns that can be formed from the name are a headline writer’s dream, but the logo is the real star of this whole thing.

Also, their colors, featuring not one, not two, not three, but FOUR shades of blue is kind of cool. The red in the eye of the Kraken in the logo just makes kind of complements the whole thing.

As a fan of one team named after a mythical beast to another, welcome to the NHL Seattle Kraken!