The Owner's Choice

I've never been a fan of this Nashville Predators logo. I understand that there are limited options for sabre-toothed tigers when it comes to being a logo, but this logo looks like a cheap cartoon version of the prehistoric cat. Of the two main logos that the team has used, this one falls way short of feeling and looking like an NHL team logo, but maybe that's why it fits the name "Predators" because even that name feels like it could be better. What should be noted, though, is that the other options the team was mulling over were pretty terrible options too.

The Associated Press dropped this news brief on Spetember 19, 1997.

If one were to run a contest where "Predators", "Tigers", "Fury", and "Attack" were the final four options, I'm actually learning towards "Predators" with my vote. Yes, Tigers would work and offer a number of marketing opportunities, but that may have only heightened the rivalry that Nashville found its in with the Detroit Red Wings. Fury and Attack are just awful when one considers the Predators logo.

I feel like this report is nothing more than a generic, gotta-give-them-something update. Those three names are names you'd find in one of the EA Sports' games when one is creating a team. I know Owen Sound of the OHL is the Attack and there have been a handful of Fury teams across the continent at various levels, but how does a sabre-toothed tiger logo fit either of those names?

The tiger does fit the "Tigers" name, of course, but the NHL already had a Tigers team when the Hamilton Tigers played from 1920-25. That's not to say that Nashville couldn't use that name as I doubt anyone has a trademark on it at the NHL level, but that name feels far too generic for a sabre-toothed tiger logo. I'm prety sure that the Nashville Smilodons wouldn't work very well either, so one had to wonder why they chose the sabre-toothed tiger as their logo.

On September 25, 1997, Craig Leipold and Jack Diller held a press conference where they unveiled the logo, two days before season tickets went on sale for the 1998-99 season. At that press conference, it was explained that "[t]he logo was a reference to a partial Smilodon skeleton found beneath downtown Nashville in 1971 during construction of the First American National Bank building, now the UBS Tower". With that tie-in to the city established, they just needed a solid name to build their brand.

According to reports, the three names of "Tigers", "Fury", and "Attack" were narrowed down from a list of 75 possible names, but Leipold went ahead and added a name he liked into the final mix - Predators. Fans were asked to vote for one of the four names after the logo was unveiled, and we'd get the Nashville name on November 13, 1997.

I'll ignore Leipold's outlandish claim that this was "the most researched name in team sports history," but having a 2-1 margin in votes for Predators is a pretty significant margin, but should we be surprised when the other options were so bad? As I said above, I'd vote for Predators if given those four options, so it's not a stretch.

At the end of the day, the name that the owner wanted was the one that the team eventually got. I'm not saying owners shouldn't have a say in the matter if they're investing hundreds of millions of dollars, but, in Nashville's case, it feels like "Predators" was never in doubt compared to the other three options. If those were best names from the 75 they started with, though, I wonder what the other 72 were.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!