Tonight I had a little fun with an AI logo generator when this story crossed my desk. The image on the left is quite generic, but the Arizona Coyotes were apparently almost the Phoenix scorpions when they moved from Winnipeg to Phoenix in 1995. I am not saying that “Scorpions” is better than “Coyotes” when it comes to the name she chose, but you have to wonder if there is an alternative universe where the Scorpions is a Stanley Cup and the team. In this reality we know that the team moved to Utah to become the mammoths, but there is a man who was involved in an earlier story this week that will be released this week.
We start with the news article submitted by the Associated Press On April 9, 1996 where BG Hockey Ventures announced the Phoenix name.
The very last rule in that article states that “[t]He called Scorpions a strong second “, which means that there were many voices for that name in the name-the-team competition that ran BG Hockey Ventures. That match collected more than 10,000 entries, so Scorpions were on many of those entries. There was no number in the article, but a man had more information than anyone else.
Coyotes’ Operational Chef Shawn Hunter – Yes, the same Shawn Hunter who was involved in the name Saga of the Colorado Avalanche – was the person told the person Associated Press That the name Coyotes had won the competition. Regarding the Kachina logo that was revealed, he said, “We think this logo was made with incredible distinction and refinement.”
I will not deny that the Kachina logo was striking thanks to the design, but I feel that someone other than Hunter should have been talking about the name of the name-the team. If he was the only person, hard figures should have been provided because we saw what happened to the Colorado Avalanche where a fanstem “Cougars” above “Avalanche” selected, but the team still chose to use Avalanche.
What should give birth in 1995 is that Hunter’s line of “more than 10,000 submissions” is the same number that he used to justify Avalanche who won the name-the-team mood in Denver.
Remember that “cougars” was the name that fans chose avalanche According to the Nostalgice videoYet the team went with Avalanche. If “Avalanche” lost that name-the-team mood in Denver, which to say that the same thing did not happen here?
I will give Hunter the advantage of the doubt that Coyotes won the game about Scorpions, but there is that little bit of disbelief that crawls, simply because of what happened in Denver. If the avalanche owners and management had been much more transparent, there would not be a bite of doubt, but again, I will give Hunter the benefit of the doubt by believing that Coyotes earned more votes than scorpions.
We cannot change history and the heating certainly when the Franchise left Arizona, but we almost had the Phoenix Scorpions in the NHL in 1995.
Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!
#Coyotes #Scorpions