In Seattle, a Little Controversy Over NHL Team Name

This much is clear: Seattle is getting an NHL team, and it will play its first game in the 2021 season. But what will that team be called? That's where things are getting a little strange. Hockey blogger John Hoven said Wednesday in a radio interview that he has learned the name will likely be the Seattle Kraken, a reference to a fictitious sea monster, reports the Seattle Times. The new franchise declined to confirm or deny. A post at sports.mynorthwest notes that the smoother-sounding Seattle Sockeyes appeared to have been the leading candidate, but an unusual legal issue is at play regarding romance novels.

It seems author Jami Davenport has been writing about the fictional Seattle Sockeyes hockey team in her books for a while, and she filed for a trademark in 2017 when news first broke that Seattle was getting a team. Davenport tells the Seattle Times that her lawyer has reached out to the team to "let them know that I was willing to work with them" but has not heard back. "I don’t like people thinking I’m the holdup here, because I'm not," she says. Another candidate in the mix: the Seattle Totems. (More Seattle stories.)