A Prize For Trophy Hunters

If there's one thing I know about team names, it's that most sports franchises opt not to pick animal names that are herbivores unless they are a powerful animal. We don't see sheep or cows very often as team names, but we do see bison and rhinos chosen for their abilities to fight off more ferocious animals. The animal to the left is an ibex which is a wild goat that has those large recurved horns on the head of the male ibex, and they're usually mountain-dwelling creatures that feed on vegetation. In short, there isn't a lot of intimidating aspects about the ibex, but we now officially have a North American hockey team who will take the ice while wearing an ibex's image as they get set for the 2026-27 season!

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the 31st ECHL franchise.

The New Mexico Goatheads is certainly a bold choice of name when one considers the background behind the name. According to the release, "[t]he brand draws inspiration from the infamous goathead thorn, a hardy desert plant known for its toughness and ability to 'stick' wherever it goes," so it makes sense not to have a thorn anywhere in the imagery. Beyond that, "[t]he logo also incorporates the strength and grit of the ibex goats found in the Florida Mountains of southern New Mexico," which, as you may have guessed from the title of the article, are hunted by sporthunters as trophy animals.

If you're wondering about how these non-native goats ended up in New Mexico, the bezoar ibex subspecies were introduced from eastern Europe and the Middle East in 1970 with a second herd added from Iran in 1974. Thanks to its original distribution in Europe and Asia, this species of ibex is adapted for both mountains and desert, making New Mexico an ideal location for the goats. The bezoar ibex also grow the world's longest horns in relation to body weight, easily reaching over one metre in height. Thanks to their population growth since 1970, they are now hunted for their impressive horns.

While I appreciate the New Mexico franchise's commitment to local flora and fauna, these ibex are hardly intimidating and prefer to run and hide than fight when challenged. The goathead thorns are seen more as a nuisance in the southern US as the plant produces spiky, "goathead"-shaped seedpods that are painful to step on, can puncture bicycle tires, and injure livestock if stepped on. Basically, the 31st ECHL franchise based their entire team name on an animal that is hunted and a plant that is seen as a nuisance. Don't quote me on this, but that's not a great start for a new hockey team.

The video above shows the logos, but let's check out the full menu.

There are some interesting design elements here that I like. The Barn Creative helped design this new identity for New Mexico hockey, and the thorn-like horizontals in the "G", "H", and "A" letters of the wordmarks is a smart inclusion. I'd love to see that incorporated into the names on the back of the jerseys to give the Goatheads a truly unique font for names, but we'll have to see if that happens.

The primary logo is a fairly standard representation of the ibex face, and it does the job of implying "goat". I struggle with the star-like "NM" secondary logo because it literally serves no purpose. If it's meant to represent the Star Axis, that's a hard fail as the Star Axis is literally a scuplture with no purpose, making the secondary logo meaningless to most hockey fans. Of course, there's no information given about the design, so this one remains a mystery for now.

The colour scheme leans into what the Arizona Coyotes were doing as the official colour palette is listed as desert red, sand, and Rio Grande blue. That last colour gives good contrast to the red and sand colours, so I'll be very interested to see what these uniforms look like when they're unveiled. Assuming they use the desert red colour as their dark jersey colour, the Goatheads should stand out in the hockey world with their chosen colour scheme. This is a big plus!

Overall, the colour scheme is solid, the font chosen for the wordmark is excellent with the thorns included, the primary logo hits the mark, but the team name just sinks the New Mexico Goatheads into an unrecoverable fail. Without explaining the imagery, the name makes no sense, the name is clunky and doesn't roll off the tongue, and it's hard to understand why this was the choice made. If the team really wanted to be different, they could have been the "New Mex Ibex" or the "New Mexico Thorns", but focusing on something like "goathead" has me wondering if the team was named by a five year-old.

Beyond that, this New Mexico team will need to win a lot of games if they want to escape the "trophy hunting" imagery that a lot of teams may employ when playing the Goatheads. If they lose a number of games over their first few seasons, they're hardly the nuisance like the goathead thorn is supposed to be, and I have a feeling that portion of the branding will be lost Florida Mountains with the ibex.

Again, there's nothing wrong with the New Mexico franchise drawing on local flora and fauna for its team identity, but the obscurity of the two chosen species they're using will make casual hockey fans wonder how this team got its name. And while General Manager Jared Johnson can boast that the new logo "represents New Mexico’s toughness, pride, and resilience", the truth is that the 31st ECHL team is named for a timid animal that is hunted for sport and a hated weed that is often destroyed before it causes major problems.

If that's not a branding fail, I'd struggle to find a better example.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!