Roadrunners Trademarked as Name of New Coyotes AHL Club

Oh the good folks at ACME will get a kick out of this one, it looks like the Coyotes will be teaming up with the Roadrunners.

The Arizona Coyotes recently purchased and relocated the Springfield Falcons of the American Hockey League, the team was moved to Tucson, AZ a city about 120 miles southeast of the Coyotes hometown of Glendale to be their top-level farm club.

After launching a name-the-team contest, a trademark registration from last week by “IceArizona AHL” seems to show off the winning entry a little prematurely, and if you read the headline (or the opening sentence) you already know that the trademark was for Tucson Roadrunners:

Tucson Roadrunners was trademarked recently by the Coyotes ownership group

Roadrunners as name is more than just a playful nod to the old Warner Bros. cartoon rivalry referenced above, in fact it’s more than likely just a mere coincidence as its ties to Arizona hockey actually pre-date the NHL’s Coyotes by a few decades.

The Phoenix Roadrunners called the Grand Canyon State home through various leagues beginning with the Western Hockey League club in 1967, followed by a stint in the WHA, before moving on to the IHL until the NHL moved to town in 1997. A new Phoenix Roadrunners popped up breifly as a member of the ECHL from 2005 through 2009.

Meep!

h/t to @mark_lavis for the heads up on this story