Newfoundland Growlers will be Name of New ECHL Team

Overwhelming evidence suggests that the St. John’s-based ECHL expansion club set to join the league for the upcoming 2018-19 season will be known as the Newfoundland Growlers.

“Fake News!”, you probably say.

Allow me to explain.

The domain name newfoundlandgrowlers.com was registered by “The Idea Factory”, the company tasked with branding the club on April 2, 2018. This little nugget discovered by Brendan McCarthy of the St. John’s Telegram last month.

Domain name registration for newfoundlandgrowlers.com (Whois.com)

“Big deal, domain names are registered all the time!”

You’re right! And just this past March we reported that this same company registered a few domain names, none of which were for the Growlers. The Growlers name was registered all on its own one month after these four were.

No name has yet been announced but domain names registered to the PR group that made the announcement include St. John’s Surge, St. John’s Storm, St. John’s Regiment, and (fans of the movie Goon will enjoy this…) the St. John’s Shamrocks.

So these four names were wrong, why couldn’t this one be?

Well, it was also registered as a trademark by the ECHL, smart guy!

Newfoundland Growlers registered as a trademark by the ECHL (USPTO.gov)

None of those other names were trademarked by the league (and kudos to SportsLogos.Net Forum user Brian in Boston for spotting this two weeks before I did)

If you’re still skeptical, the only other team in Canada released a press release yesterday which basically confirmed the above suspicions; the Brampton Beast sent an email within the league about their 2018-19 schedule which referred to their new country-mates as the Newfoundland Growlers:

Brampton Beast press release referring to the Newfoundland Growlers

When this press release was posted to the public on their website, the wording was changed to eliminate all the juicy bits:

Growlers name removed for the public posting (BramptonBeast.com)

Everyone satisfied? Good, now we can go on with this and discuss this name.

First, it’s great St. John’s is finally branding their hockey team to include the entire island of Newfoundland rather than just St. John’s. There are few Canadian provinces in which their residents boast pride in their homeland than those from Newfoundland and Labrador (at least according to the bumper stickers I frequently see around Southern Ontario), hopefully this geographic identifier will tap into that passion.

Growlers? At first thought I presumed this would be a polar bear reference but apparently the dictionary is a thing which helps us learn about other meanings words may have. Behold:

An iceberg! You may recall that St. John’s previous two hockey franchises were both known as the IceCaps which were (partially) named for the icebergs which frequently float past the city in the Atlantic Ocean.

I sense an interesting double-meaning here for the team… if this were 1998 the logo would most definitely be a polar bear holding a hockey stick while baring its teeth with a small iceberg in the distance behind it. But it’s 2018 so it’ll probably be an iceberg within a circle and a small polar bear silhouette worked in there somewhere. I’d imagine there’s a maple leaf too because that’s the law.

There’s no word when the announcement would be made, the article in The Telegram theorized it would be made following the St. John’s Edge playoff run in the NBL Canada Playoffs, but as everyone of course already knows the Edge were ousted in the semi-finals two weeks ago following a six-game series with the London Lightning.

So, Newfoundland Growlers? Your thoughts? I think it could work especially with the double-meaning.

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