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Seattle, NHL's 32nd team, unveils Kraken nickname, team colors

July 23 (UPI) -- Seattle's new NHL team, set to make its debut in the 2021-22 season, unveiled its nickname, logo and color scheme Thursday.

The team said it will be called the "Kraken" and revealed a color scheme of icy blue and navy blue with red accents. The Kraken's logo features a twisting blue "S" as an homage to the Seattle Metropolitans -- the city's first professional hockey team.

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The logo also includes a tentacle -- an obvious nod to the mythical sea creature the team is named after.

"While you're seeing the 'S,' and thinking about the Metropolitans, thinking about the colors, that negative space tentacle is hiding there, wrapping around your ankles, ready to pull you down," Matty Merrill, Adidas' design director who worked on the logo, told ESPN. "We had to make sure it wasn't a cartoon character or something silly."

Andy Jassy, a part-owner of the Kraken, said the franchise looked at more than 1,200 names and narrowed that list to more than 100. The club eventually settled on five finalists, which were sealed into an envelope and placed in a time capsule in Seattle's Space Needle that will be opened in 2062 -- the Needle's 100th anniversary.

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"It's a very unique and unusual name in sports, because almost all sport franchises end with an 'S,'" Jassy said. "There are a lot of obvious connections to Seattle -- part of because of our maritime history; part of because we have so much water around us -- but there is longtime folklore in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest of this mystical Kraken creature that lives just below the surface of the sea, which really captivated people for many years.

"That mystique, that intensity, and that power that people have long talked about with the Kraken is what we expect our NHL team to play with."

The NHL officially named Seattle as its 32nd team in 2018 for a $650 million expansion fee. The Kraken -- along with the WNBA's Seattle Storm -- will play at Climate Pledge Arena after Amazon secured naming rights for Seattle's downtown arena one month ago.

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The cost of the building has been estimated at more than $900 million, and the 18,100-seat venue is expected to host more than 200 events each year. The arena is under construction on the Seattle Center campus -- on the site of the former KeyArena that served as the home of the NBA's Seattle SuperSonics.

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