Without the fanfare or protests that the Oakland Athletics are experiencing in their MLB move from Oakland to Las Vegas (via Sacramento), the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes—originally the Winnipeg Jets v1.0—are moving to Salt Lake City next season. This won’t impact the league’s divisional structure, as the move keeps the franchise in the same general region out west and won’t cause any weird travel issues, either. Awesome.

But the deal is that the team icons, logos, and name get left behind in Phoenix, in the hope that a future expansion team will pick up the imagery and march on. Therefore, the new Salt Lake City franchise will need a new name, logo, mascot, etc. A recent poll from the new owners in Utah brought about many fun suggestions—and many odd ones, of course. Never leave it up to the public to choose anything, really.

Here we go with our thoughts on this randomly fun adventure, based on some of the public polling:

  • Blizzard: With the Colorado Avalanche nearby still, this just seems silly.
  • Buzz: Utah is the Beehive State, but hockey and honey don’t seem to be a natural combo.
  • Golden Eagles: This was the name of a minor league team in SLC from 1969-1994.
  • Hive: Again, this is a bee correlative, but it’s not one that strikes fear in the heart of opponents.
  • Stingers: We like the alliterative impact of “Salt Lake Stingers” but “Utah Stingers” sounds weak(er).
  • Swarm: See above. This would be our pick, in truth, to go with “Salt Lake Swarm”—by a lot.
  • Yeti: There is no reason to go here, since Utah is nowhere near the Himalayans.

Even though current/prior professional sports teams in Utah have stuck with the state name in their overall identity, it’s really only been on the basketball court: the Utah Jazz, the Utah Starzz, etc. Of course, the Jazz were founded in New Orleans, and that name makes little sense for Salt Lake City. Alas, the Starzz were the WNBA team derived from the “Jazz” name and eventually moved to San Antonio before settling in Sin City.

We get it that Utah is a smaller state and making the entire populace feel connected is important (remember, the Arizona Coyotes started out as the Phoenix Coyotes), but with Salt Lake City having hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics and set to host again in the next decade, it’s clear the municipality itself deserves some long-overdue kudos. Therefore, we are on board with the Salt Lake Swarm for hockey.

There is still some disconnect between bees and winter, but then again, did you know this?

“In the winter, honeybees cluster tightly inside of the hive to stay warm. The worker bees vibrate their bodies to generate heat. The queen is toward the center of the cluster where the temperature is around 90–100 °F. Clusters have two parts: a dense out mantel and a loose inner core. In the outer mental, bees are packed together to retain heat. Toward the center, the bees are loosely packed and can freely move around. The cluster expands or contracts depending on the outside temperature.”

That sounds kind of awesome, actually, especially the “expands or contracts” bit. Quite fierce, in fact, and who doesn’t want to hear the sound of an approaching swarm played over the hockey arena sound system? Yikes. Make the mascot a queen bee, and this sounds like a done deal to us. “Swarm” is also a great name for the sport of hockey, because that’s really what skaters do around the puck, no? Exactly. Bring it on, SLC.