The origins of all 30 NHL team names

(Image credit: (AP Photo))

last updated 8 January 2015

Ever wonder what a Canuck is? How about a Blue Jacket? Here's a breakdown of how the league's 30 teams got their names.

In 1925, the New York Americans joined the National Hockey League and played their home games at the old Madison Square Garden. Tex Rickard, the boxing promoter and ex-gold prospector who built and owned the arena, decided he wanted his own NHL team, which he was awarded in 1926. Rickard's team was immediately dubbed "Tex's Rangers" as a pun referencing the paramilitary force founded in Texas during the 1830s. The Americans folded in 1942, while Tex's Rangers remain.

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Given that New Jersey has never been known for its mountains, the team needed a new nickname after the Colorado Rockies relocated to the Garden State in 1982. The New Jersey Sports and Exhibition Authority sponsored a statewide newspaper contest to determine the new nickname and some of the other finalists included Americans, Blades, Coastals, Colonials, Gulls, Jaguars, Meadowlanders, and Meadowlarks. While some fans objected to the winning selection on religious grounds — one threatened the life of a reporter who was covering the search — the Devil has an entirely non-religious folk history in New Jersey. According to legend, a harmless creature known as the Leeds Devil, or the Jersey Devil, roamed the Pine Barrens in the southern part of the state from 1887 until 1938.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sponsored a name-the-team contest, but Carol McGregor, the wife of one of the franchise's part owners, Jack McGregor, was the one responsible for the nickname. In his book, Pittsburgh Penguins: The Official History of the First 30 Years, Bob Grove describes how Carol McGregor came up with the name. "I was thinking of something with a P. And I said to Jack, 'What do they call the Civic Arena?' And he said, 'The Big Igloo.' So I thought, ice...Pittsburgh...Penguins." More than 700 of the 26,000 contest entries were for Penguins.

In 1909, John Ambrose O'Brien created the Club de Hockey Canadien. Ambrose wanted his team, a charter member of the National Hockey Association, to appeal to Montreal's francophone population and he hoped to drum up a rivalry with the city's established team, the Wanderers. The Canadiens are often referred to as "The Habs" or "Les Habs," an abbreviation of "Les Habitants," the name for the early settlers of New France.

Conn Smythe purchased Toronto's hockey team in 1927 and one of his first orders of business was renaming the team. The franchise that began play as the Arenas in 1917 changed its nickname to St. Patricks in 1919 to attract Toronto's Irish population. Smythe eventually decided on Maple Leafs, for a couple possible reasons. Smythe fought in the Maple Leaf Regiment during World War I, and there was a former Toronto hockey team called the East Maple Leaves.

The Winnipeg Jets, formed in late 1971, got their moniker from a team of the same name that played in Canada's Western Hockey League. The current franchise is actually the second incarnation; the first relocated to Phoenix, Arizona, in 1996 and became the Phoenix Coyotes. The current franchise was originally called the Atlanta Thrashers — named by Ted Turner after Georgia's state bird, the brown thrasher — before it was sold to a Canadian group, True North Sports & Entertainment, in 2011, and relocated.

Had Tampa Bay been awarded a baseball team in the early '90s, they likely would've been called the Florida Panthers, a reference to the endangered species of the same name. Instead, the nickname was adopted by Florida's second NHL team. When Panthers President Bill Torrey revealed the nickname, he told reporters, "A panther, for your information, is the quickest striking of all cats. Hopefully, that's how we will be on the ice."

World War I veteran and coffee tycoon Frederic McLaughlin was the team's owner when it entered the NHL in 1926. McLaughlin named the team after the 86th Infantry Division in which he served. The "Black Hawk Division" was named after Chief Black Hawk of the Sauk American Indian tribe, who fought the Illinois militia in 1832. The nickname was officially changed from Black Hawks to Blackhawks in 1986.

Rockies, the nickname for Colorado's hockey team that left for New Jersey in 1982, had been adopted by Denver's baseball team by the time the Quebec Nordiques left Canada for the Front Range in 1995. Management originally wanted to name the team Extreme, but received all sorts of negative feedback, and justifiably so. Avalanche, which eventually beat out Black Bears, Outlaws, Storm, Wranglers, Renegades, Rapids, and Cougars, drew some criticism, as well, given their deadly nature. A member of the marketing group responsible for naming the team replied: "This is the NHL, a rough and tough sport, and Avalanche is something that matches the 'on the edge' feel they want to create. Hey, Cougars and Bears kill people, too. People shouldn't get so excited about Avalanche being a disrespectful name or something. It's just a name."

Sharks was chosen from 2,300 entries in San Jose's name-the-team contest. The other finalists included Rubber Puckies, Screaming Squids, Salty Dogs, and Blades. Blades was the most popular entry, but ultimately rejected because of its gang implications. When the nickname was chosen, seven shark species made their home in a stretch of the Pacific Ocean off the California coast called The Red Triangle.

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