Coyotes Over Scorpions

I was having a little fun with an AI logo generator tonight when this story crossed my desk. The image to the left is fairly generic, but the Arizona Coyotes apparently were almost the Phoenix Scorpions when they moved from Winnipeg to Phoenix in 1995. I'm not saying that "Scorpions" is better than "Coyotes" when it comes to the name they chose, but one has to wonder if there's an alternate universe out there where the Scorpions have won a Stanley Cup and the team is thriving in Arizona. In this reality, we know the team moved to Utah to become the Mammoths, but there's a guy who was involved in a previous story this week that makes an appearance in this one.

We'll start with the news article filed by the Associated Press on April 9, 1996 where BG Hockey Ventures announced the Phoenix name.

The very last line in that article states that "[t]he name Scorpions was a strong second", meaning that there were a lot of votes for that name in the name-the-team competition that BG Hockey Ventures ran. That contest garnered more than 10,000 entries, so Scorpions were on a lot of those entries. There wasn't a number given in the article, but one man seemed to have more info than anyone else.

Coyotes' operations chief Shawn Hunter - yes, the same Shawn Hunter involved in the Colorado Avalanche name saga - was the person who told the Associated Press that the Coyotes name had won the contest. Regarding the Kachina logo that was unveiled, he said, "We think this logo is made with incredible distinction and sophistication."

I won't deny that the Kachina logo was eye-catching thanks to its design, but I feel like someone other than Hunter should have been talking about the name-the-team contest. If he was the only person, there should have been hard numbers provided because we saw what happened with the Colorado Avalanche where a fan vote selected "Cougars" over "Avalanche", but the team still opted to use Avalanche.

What should have concerned everyone in 1995 is that Hunter's line of "more than 10,000 entries" is the same number he used to justify Avalanche winning the name-the-team vote in Denver.

Remember that "Cougars" was the name that fans chose ahead of Avalanche as per the Nostalgice video, yet the team went with Avalanche anyway. If "Avalanche" lost that name-the-team vote in Denver, what's to say the same thing didn't happen here?

I'll give Hunter the benefit of the doubt that Coyotes won the contest over Scorpions, but there's that tiny bit of disbelief that creeps in simply because of what went down in Denver. Had the Avalanche owners and management been far more transparent, there wouldn't be that morsel of doubt, but, again, I'll give Hunter the benefit of the doubt in believing that Coyotes earned more votes than Scorpions.

We can't change history and it certainly stung 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!