The Utah Hockey Club has removed “Utah Wasatch” from consideration for a new team name, replacing it with “Utah Outlaws” in fan voting.
On Wednesday, the first-year NHL team announced it would no longer move forward with “Yeti” or “Yetis” as its official nickname due to what the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office called the “likelihood of confusion” for consumers to other companies and brands that use the name. Utah HC unsuccessfully tried to broker a “coexistence agreement” with Yeti Coolers LLC to use the name.
The team instead asked fans to vote on three different name options: Utah Hockey Club, Utah Mammoth and Utah Wasatch.
While Mammoth made the final four in the initial fan vote last year, Wasatch was a new option that referenced a local mountain range and would allow the team to use a “mythical snow hill creature in the form of a Yeti” as its mascot, according to Mike Maughan of Smith Entertainment Group, who added that mascot will also be used if the team keeps Utah Hockey Club as its name.
Wednesday night’s game against the Pittsburgh Penguins was the first of four home games where fans would vote on the three options using tablets stationed around Delta Center. The early returns from that vote helped convince the team to drop Wasatch in favor of Outlaws, seeing little support for the former.
“We listened to your feedback and dug into all the Qualtrics data from last night’s survey,” the team said in a statement Thursday. “For the team name, it’s clear that Outlaws should be in the mix instead of Wasatch, so we’re swapping it out.”
The survey will continue at the arena Friday, Sunday and Tuesday.
Outlaws was among the initial 20 names presented to fans in a survey last year and was among six finalists after the vote was completed.
Maughan said the team is confident that whatever name wins the fan vote should clear the patent and trademark process.
“We have an incredible team, and we are very confident we have a clear path to each of those names,” Maughan said. “We have strategies to approach each of them and feel that we’re on very solid ground as we continue forward.”
Utah Hockey Club is in its first season playing in Salt Lake City. The Arizona Coyotes’ franchise was sold to Utah Jazz owners Smith Entertainment Group in April 2024. SEG acquired the franchise, its players and its hockey operations department in the sale, although the team is considered a new franchise rather than an extension of the Coyotes’ legacy.
