New AHL team to be Named Springfield Thunderbirds?

As first reported by Annie Maroon of masslive.com, Springfield Hockey LLC (the group who owns the freshly relocated AHL Portland Pirates) has applied for a trademark to use the name Springfield Thunderbirds with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the trademark was filed on May 31. The team also trademarked the name Springfield Indians as well as some of their retro team logos, possibly for use on a throwback night? Perhaps for retro merchandise?

“Although we like to play up with the heritage, we will not be naming the team Springfield Indians,” Ownership group member Paul Picknelly told masslive.com not appearing to elaborate as to the reason why (but we all kinda know why).

Previous Springfield AHL teams include the Indians and Falcons

“Thunderbirds” and “Indians” were the only two names the organization had filed trademarks for at this time.

We did some further digging around and found that three domain names associated with the Thunderbirds name — SpringfieldThunderbirds.com, SpringfieldTBirds.com, and TBirdsHockey.com were all registered on May 25th by an email address belonging to Nathan Costa. Mr. Costa just happened to be named Executive Vice President of the new Springfield team earlier today. Alright, now that makes sense.

It seems like a pretty sure bet to me.

The USPTO trademark registration for Springfield Thunderbirds

According to the MassLive.com story the team acknowledges that they have indeed trademarked the Thunderbirds name but it is just one of many still being considered.

We were unable to find any evidence that suggested any other names were trademarked or registered as a domain so it seems like this is probably it.

The official announcement will be on Wednesday, June 15th where the team will also unveil their new logo. The team will be the top-level affiliate of the NHL’s Florida Panthers … a big year for re-branding in that family!