Goodbye Utah Hockey Club, hello Utah Mammoth!
After a 13-month process, which included debates over trademarks and more than 850,000 fan votes, the NHL team has revealed its new permanent identity: Utah Mammoth.
This name change replaces the Utah Hockey Club, which was a temporary name during its inaugural 2024-25 season, after Smith Entertainment Group acquired and relocated the Arizona Coyotes franchise to Salt Lake City.
When it came to naming the team, we did something unprecedented: we went through four rounds of community voting, including gathering feedback not only on potential names, but also on possible logos. The community chose the Utah Mammoth brand, and it represents a symbol of who we are, where we come from, and the unstoppable force we are building together.
Ryan and Ashley Smith, owners of the Utah Mammoth
On Wednesday, Utah began selling a limited selection of initial Utah Mammoth merchandise, including jerseys, caps, and hoodies, at the team store inside the Delta Center. A press conference with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman was also scheduled.
The Mammoth jerseys will be available for purchase later this offseason. They will be seen at the NHL draft in June, where Utah’s selections will wear the new jerseys. In addition, Utah won the second draft lottery drawing on Monday night, securing the fourth overall pick.
Next season, Utah will introduce a mascot inspired by the Mammoth at home games, which will be revealed in the coming months.
The name was inspired by the herds of mammoths that inhabited what is now Utah more than 10,000 years ago. Fossils have been found throughout the state, and in 1988 a complete mammoth skeleton was discovered in Huntington Canyon.
Evidence suggests that mammoths charged in herds at speeds exceeding 25 miles per hour, comparable to the speeds reached by the fastest NHL skaters.
Team Statement
According to the team, “Mammoth” was chosen in the singular, instead of “Mammoths”, because “it symbolizes a team, all united and all Utah”.
The team’s new logo, the head of a mammoth with a curved tusk, includes several details for fans.
- The snow-covered Wasatch Range forms the top of the mammoth’s head.
- The silhouette of Utah and a negative space “M” are hidden on the left side of the logo.
- The curved tusk evokes the letter “U” for Utah.
- “Tusks Up” is the official battle cry of the Mammoth fans.
Utah will use the new Mammoth logo on the home jerseys and the state name on the away jerseys, joining the Carolina Hurricanes as the only teams currently using a logo on one jersey and a wordmark on the other. According to the team, the away jerseys continue the team’s inaugural season message “to put a prominent focus on representing Utah when we are out of state.”
The Mammoth will sport patches featuring the state of Utah and a hockey stick on the shoulders of their home jerseys, and a patch with the Mammoth logo on the shoulder of their away jerseys.
This rebranding puts an end to a process that began over a year ago.
The team was known as the Utah Hockey Club in 2024-25, as it did not have much time to decide on a permanent nickname and logo. The design firm Doubleday & Cartwright developed the team’s color scheme: Rock Black, Salt White, and Mountain Blue, aiming for the franchise’s second season for an official nickname.
In May 2024, SEG launched a Qualtrics survey with 20 potential team names. This generated six finalists in June for another fan vote: Blizzard, Utah HC, Mammoth, Outlaws, Venom, and Yeti.
During Utah’s inaugural season, “Yeti” was widely considered the team’s final name, even by its players. However, in January, Utah announced that it would not proceed with “Yeti” or “Yetis” as a nickname, after the United States Patent and Trademark Office rejected a trademark application for “Utah Yetis” due to the “likelihood of confusion” for consumers with other companies and brands using the name. Among those parties was Yeti Coolers LLC, which manufactures drinkware, coolers, and apparel.
With Yeti and Yetis discarded, the team announced in January that Utah Hockey Club, Utah Mammoth, and Utah Wasatch would be the finalists in a fan vote at the Delta Center. Fans voted with iPads located at stations around the arena, which displayed the names, logos, and potential branding for each option.
While Wasatch was never part of the previous fan votes, the team included it as a new option. It referred to a local mountain range and would have allowed the team to use a “mythical snowy hill creature in the form of a Yeti” as a mascot. But when the team saw the first voting results, Utah Wasatch was quickly replaced by Utah Outlaws.
Although the total votes were not revealed, the team said that Mammoth was “the clear favorite” in the final round of voting.
Utah asserted that the names in the final voting group had no trademark issues. There are also no issues with the Colorado Mammoth of the National Lacrosse League. According to the team, Utah has been in regular dialogue with Kroenke Sports and Entertainment, owner of the lacrosse franchise, and has received support for the new Utah team name.
Regarding “Utah Hockey Club”, the team said that name and brand “will always be part of our history” and could be honored nostalgically in the years to come.
