The Professional Women’s Hockey League has unveiled the names and logos for its first-ever expansion franchises: the Vancouver Goldeneyes and Seattle Torrent.
Seattle’s nickname and logo, a stylized “S,” both draw from the region’s waterways, the league said in a media release, as does the primary color palette. The green and blue team colors also correspond with Seattle’s other pro sports teams: the Seahawks (NFL), Mariners (MLB), Storm (WNBA), Kraken (NHL), Sounders (MLS) and Reign (NWSL).
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Vancouver’s team, meanwhile, is named after a bird native to the region. The logo — a bird’s eye encircled in feathers — points to the Northwest, as the league said in its media release, and heavily features blue, cream and bronze.
“The Seattle Torrent and Vancouver Goldeneyes are bold, distinctive, and true to who we are as a league,” said Amy Scheer, the PWHL’s executive vice president of business operations. “Each team identity is deeply connected to its home — Seattle draws inspiration from the waterways that shape its landscape, and Vancouver from its abundance of unique wildlife.”
The announcement comes just weeks after the PWHL unveiled Seattle and Vancouver’s inaugural jerseys, which will not feature the team names or logos. Instead, players in each market will wear jerseys with their city’s name stitched diagonally across the front of the sweater, “paying homage to the designs worn by the PWHL’s inaugural six teams,” the league said last month.
The PWHL only officially announced it would expand to Seattle and Vancouver in April, which put the league up against manufacturing deadlines. Jersey design, from inception to manufacturing, for any pro sports team, can be a years-long process. Fully branded jerseys are expected to drop ahead of the 2026-27 season.
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Designing the jerseys was one of the first things the league started to work on when it was decided they would go to Seattle and Vancouver, Scheer told The Athletic. But they still did not have enough time.
“We couldn’t do the jerseys with the team names and the brand identities because of the deadline,” Scheer said. “The fact that Bauer was able to get these (inaugural jerseys) done for us in a bit of a compressed timeline was great.”
The expansion teams starting their first seasons with nicknames and logos is a change from the league’s approach with its original six teams, which were not named until the PWHL’s second season.
The point this time around was to drum up more fan excitement, establish an identity and have more merchandise available for purchase. The inaugural jerseys went on sale last month. Other team gear bearing Seattle and Vancouver’s names and logos is available now.
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“Getting the team identity launched at a later date allows us to be a little bit more successful in terms of having merchandise available for fans,” Scheer said.
Seattle and Vancouver will play their first game on Nov. 21 in Vancouver at the Pacific Coliseum to open the PWHL’s third season.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
NHL, Sports Business, Women’s Hockey
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