MANALAPAN, Fla. -- After the NHL Board of Governors meeting Monday, top officials from the Utah Hockey Club and the NHL chatted about the development of the team’s permanent brand identity.
Utah owner Ryan Smith and president of hockey operations Chris Armstrong huddled with Gary Bettman, the NHL Commissioner, and Brian Jennings, the League’s senior executive vice president of marketing and chief branding officer.
“We’re deep in the [jersey] design process for next season, which goes hand in glove with our brand identity and what we’re going to do there,” Armstrong said. “We’re all working within the timelines and trying to get creative about those to give ourselves as much runway to get all those pieces lined up properly.”
Creating a new NHL jersey alone is supposed to be an 18-month effort that includes design, trademark clearance, procurement of raw materials, and finally production of game and retail versions.
The NHL established the new franchise April 18, giving Utah about five months before its inaugural training camp and about 17 months before its second. The team decided to use a temporary brand identity this season while developing a permanent one.
When the inaugural jerseys went on sale to the public Nov. 15, Utah set sales records.
The deadline is approaching for decisions on the permanent brand identity.
“I’d say we’re getting close to needing to make some decisions,” Armstrong said. “I’d say early in the new year. Everybody’s tried their best to work flexibly -- or away from hard and fast deadlines -- because it is a complicated process, especially on the [intellectual property] side. Just making sure we’ve got everything lined up and buttoned up before we make any firm decisions.”
Any announcement or unveiling likely will come after the season.
“That’s what we’re thinking now,” Armstrong said. “We’ve been saying we don’t want to take the wind out of our sails on Season One. We’ve got such a great response in our inaugural season and a lot of momentum, and we want the focus to continue to be on this inaugural season and the efforts our players are putting into making it a successful season. We don’t want to dominate that conversation with what we might be or not be next year. I think that’s important.”
Utah is a work in progress in many ways due to the tight timeline. The team is skating in a temporary practice facility; a permanent one is under construction and on schedule to open in September. Delta Center had initial renovations to be ready for this season; Utah is still finalizing the plan for the next phase of renovations and will start them after the team and the NBA’s Utah Jazz finish their seasons.
But Smith and Armstrong knew a lot of people in the NHL before Utah joined it. Although this is Utah’s first appearance at the big annual Board of Governors meeting in December, Smith has been to a smaller Board of Governors meeting before. Armstrong has been to two, and he has been meeting regularly with people from around the League.
“I feel like we’ve had a good opportunity to get to know everybody,” Armstrong said. “And traveling with the team, as I have been this year, I’ve been able to reach out, and see people before games and at games, and get to put a little bit more meaningful conversation together than a quick hello in the room.”
Other NHL teams have been helpful.
The Seattle Kraken, who began play as an expansion team in 2021-22, gave guidance on the practice facility. So did the Edmonton Oilers, even during their run to the Stanley Cup Final last season.
Utah has brought marketing and game presentation staff members to road games, and teams have brought them behind the scenes in their production rooms. The Vegas Golden Knights, who began play as an expansion team in 2017-18 and became known for their game presentation, have been particularly open with that.
The Philadelphia Flyers even gave Armstrong a ride to the meeting here Monday after Utah’s 4-2 win in Philadelphia on Sunday.
“Those little things have really made us feel like we’ve been a part of this community for longer than we’ve been here, which has been great,” Armstrong said. “Everybody’s been extremely supportive along the way to helping us get launched successfully and sharing their insights and best practices with us in a lot of areas on the business side that have been helpful to us.”
Armstrong chatted with others about Utah’s new jerseys at the meeting Monday.
“As I’ve said before, I think given how well the jerseys have been received this year, we want to honor that feedback from our fans and try to keep things substantially similar next year,” he said. “It’ll be updated obviously with our identity and some little tweaks that, based on this year’s feedback, we think can improve the jerseys even further.
“But yeah, as I said earlier today [to a group of colleagues], we’re going to be playing catchup for a while, and so everybody’s been great at recognizing that and working with us to make sure that we get things right and are making decisions in the right conditions.”
