300: Metalness of Potential NHL Utah Names | Metal Sports

Transcript

Speaker: The. Cast. Them. Down. Hey, elemental nation, it is I, Tim. That's Matt. That's Doug. And, uh, I want to start this episode. What was that wave? It was a friendly wave. Hi there. Usually you don't use your elbow in sync with you. You locked your wrist.

Speaker: Just kind of... I mean, we have to develop new wave. Like, how many people do you wave to on a daily basis? Me, dozens. Doesn't it get boring after a while? I like to try out new waves. The only new wave I like is that of British heavy metal. Ah, see? I set you up there. Thank you. I've hit the ding, but then I have to click this. All right. There's the... Traditional American metal. You have that out. The new wave of it. So...

Speaker: You may remember that we here on Podcast Them Down created metal identities for the entire professional women's hockey league, the PWHL, and I wanted to congratulate PWHL Minnesota for winning the Walter Cup in five games. So I'm wearing my shirt.

Speaker: There you go. The Wendingo, right? Wendingo. Yeah, that's what we called them. That was our metal branding for that team. For the Minnesota team was the Minnesota Wendingo. So it's funny how

Speaker: how well it mirrors the NHL because, for example, Toronto and the PWHL got reversed swept. That means you're cocking your head. That means they were one game away from winning the series and then got swept out of it, just like the Toronto Maple Leaf. So that happened to PWHL.

Speaker: montreal i mean toronto uh boston was really good and has players i like but i hate the team just like boston's nhl i mean i have i have been following obliquely clearly not as closely as you uh the pwhl

Speaker: And I've been mostly impressed. The only thing that hasn't been impressing me is the fact that they're stubbornly refusing to cough up the buckeroonies and give us, you know, our due desserts for these identities. Well, we don't know if they've taken these identities yet, but... Right.

Speaker: We are going to settle for just the credit. Doug will settle for the credit, allowing Tim and I to split the profits. I think being consistent with our AI episode coming soon, we just take the credit. We can't take the money in the public domain. Oh, that's true. Probably can't take the credit either. No, that's public credit.

Speaker: That's everyone's credit. Thank you everyone for those brilliant ideas. And the money. The money. Public money. So, we're going to do the same thing for the NHL. So, the Phoenix Coyotes, you may or may not know, have announced that they are relocating to Salt Lake City, Utah. The owner of the Coyotes

Speaker: is retaining the rights to the brand. And he's allowed to bid for an expansion team in Arizona. If he can secure an arena, that was really the problem. Well, one of the many problems was they didn't have an arena. Okay. So wait, I haven't been following the drama. What's happening to the one they built for them?

Speaker: Uh, basically they kept trying to secure rights for, uh, for arenas. They built them one, uh, the wrong place in Glendale, I believe, but they wanted to be in Scottsdale and, uh, it went south. Like, uh, the coyotes like never made money. So they got locked out of their Glendale arena.

Speaker: you know, fast forward, they're playing in a college arena because the guy couldn't get a deal with any of the cities. There was talk of like Tucson. I don't know. I don't care. Arizona's a shithole anyway. So they have a reasonably metal flag though, as we know. Yeah, I do recall that. But for so the team moving to Utah,

Speaker: they're going to play the next season as Utah. This is just going to say Utah on their jerseys while they're kicking the can down the road to get a brand. So they came out, you can vote on one of 20 names. So I wanted to blast through these names, assign medal scores, and then figure out what the most medal possible name is.

Speaker: I like this a lot. A postcard in the mail to Utah. Before you do that, I do have a shocking revelation that I've just discovered. Tim, do you know what the state bird of Utah is? Is it the caribou? No. Honestly, the caribou is probably a more appropriate choice for Utah's state bird. Is it the robo?

Speaker: No, no, that would be a good bird. Think of the Baltimore Oreo. I mean, honestly, that's still a better bird. Great bird. That's a great bird. Oh, ostrich. Nope, not an ostrich still. Okay. What kind of bird definitely doesn't live in Utah? The Arctic tern. You are so close. I'm going to give it to you. The state bird of Utah is the seagull.

Speaker: But the technical name of the seagull that is the state bird is the California gull.

Speaker: So we're clearly not dealing with people who are great at picking things. So we should keep that in mind. And you can't name them the Gulls because that's an AHL team. Right. Yeah. Okay. The Utah Gulls. All right. So I don't want to belabor this because we're just going to tell them like, unlike the PWHL, they came out with, here's some potential names.

Speaker: OK, so let's just blast through these 20 of them and give it a quick rating. We're going to agree on a number and discuss why briefly. All right. First one up, Utah Frost. Oh, before we talk about the Utah part, all of them will be Utah. There are no Salt Lake City anythings. OK, so there's a ceiling on it. Yeah, right away.

Speaker: And are we giving them out of 10 out of 5? Out of 10. Standard metal derivations. That's right. S -D -T's. S -M -D's. H -M -D's. Utah Frost. Frost, pretty metal. Does it get cold in Utah? I don't know. I guess. I mean like Frost, Bit, and Kingdoms. That's pretty black metal. But also, Frost isn't really frightening. It just sounds like kind of inconvenient.

Speaker: I mean, frost on the nose for ice hockey. Well, frost on the nose is not good for you. That's how you lose a nose.

Speaker: Now, I can't tell you if their key demo is produce farmers frost could be terrifying, but I'll just give that a five. You know what? That's a perfectly serviceable middling. It's not great. No one's going to go, let's go frost. No, that won't happen, but I'm sure they can and will do much worse. That's a five.

Speaker: I mean, we live with the name penguins and that's probably dumber. So yeah, it's a five. Yeah, but they played it in igloo. So they used to now they play in a paint arena, which doesn't make sense. All right. You said they could do worse. Let's find out Utah H C.

Speaker: Oh, oh, fuck off. Fuck, fuck every, fuck you. You know what? Totally agree. Fuck you and your perfectly researched genealogy of family. I wonder if that's on here. All right. Utah powder. Utah. Oh, cause snow. You know how you, you know how you defeat powder? You do this.

Speaker: I powder powder would not would would just make the ice a mess. Right? They get rid of the powder every between every period. Powder. I didn't have like freaky powers. He could like call electricity. Doug knows what I'm talking about. And you were this weird movie from the 90s. Yeah. So yeah, so I had that God with alopecia.

Speaker: If they had that guy as the mascot, it might be fun. I just feel like the drug thing, and then it's Utah, and the naivety, except they're not naive. Whoever's proposing this. No, this is, oh, you know what? Doug's right. It's a mind fuck. This is mean. This is someone trying to trick Mormons. Oh yeah, Powder, that's a great name. And then they're just going to make Coke jokes the whole season. I'm going to guess Fours. Fours.

Speaker: Let me throw out four and see how we like that. It's a three.

Speaker: Yeah. Two and a half. Two and a half. All right. Mountaineers, Utah Mountaineers. Isn't that a college? No. No. It's not a well -worn college team. You can't. Oh, I'm going to, we're going to be the Ohio, the Ohio Buckeye. Fuck you. No, you can't be the Mountaineers. First of all, first of all, there's already an avalanche. A Mountaineer. Yeah. That's like a division. Oh, an avalanche is routinely kill Mountaineers.

Speaker: Yeah. And while Utah has mountains and all that, every other state around it has more famous claim to mountains. Yeah. Yeah. No, two. Two. I think it's better than Frost, though.

Speaker: No, you know, when you get tobacco related name, no, you're not picture Matt, you're not picturing the mascot who I'm picturing, like, you know, a discarded gold rush mass cheap, and they just give them a pickaxe.

Speaker: Now we're picturing the same thing, but that's lazy. We like singular nouns that don't actually mean anything that are slightly menacing. Wendingo, plague, frost. At least that's trying. This is just like a 1968 proposal and it is Utah, but still, no. You want to go with three then? Four? Yeah, three.

Speaker: Three. All right. Utah. Freeze. Wait. Breeze or freeze? Freeze with an F. It's a little harsher than frost. As in Dr. Victor Vaughn. Nice to see you. Shail out.

Speaker: We get five five. This is worse. It's a five, five and move on. I mean, it's the same pitch. So why not give it the same score? All right. I know what I will score this one. We can call them more than their days. The Utah mammoth.

Speaker: That's a 10, I'm sorry. That's an absolute 10. That is not a 10. I'm all in. Mammoth, come on. No, that's a eight. Is there any basis for that? All right, whatever. I'm not thinking about it tonight. Let's go. Mammoth's gore things, you know? That's pretty cool. All right. Wait, hold on. What? There's an unincorporated semi ghost town in Juop County called Mammoth.

Speaker: Hmm. Was that a point off? It's named after a mine, a silver mine. Uh, uh, there are mammoths discovered. Uh, yeah, I think that, yeah. All right. Well, they could use the discarded mountain man, uh, mascot still. Oh, for the, like, for the mammoth minor. Yeah. Okay. It's an eight. It's an eight. I agree. It's an eight. All right. Utah black diamonds.

Speaker: Now, the thing about this is there's a Stradivarius song called Black Diamond, and it's one of their best songs. But I have a feeling that's not why they called it this. It's unintentionally metal. How many of these two -word names? That's a trend right now, right? This is the only two -word name.

Speaker: Now, well, I mean, in the NHL, you're thinking of golden Knights, for example. Yeah. So this could be the equivalent, the black diamonds, like capitoles. Um, uh, huh. That would be naming your team after an entirely different sport.

Speaker: Which does work, like aren't the, the Pacers are named for IndyCar, right? Did we establish that at some point? That's strange. I'm not sure what that gains you.

Speaker: I don't know. Uh, the idea of a black diamond sounds a cultish to me. I does. I like it more than frost. It's funny cause it, you know, black diamonds weren't allowed to be in the ironic priesthood until like the sixties. Um, so that's kind of ironic coming from Utah.

Speaker: But, hmm. About a six. Let's give it a six. Seven. All right, seven. Doug's persuaded me. All right, Utah Blast. Ooh, hmm. Again, this is tricky. We claim this. There are teams. Yeah, there's already a blast. Aren't they like an indoor soccer team? Yeah, a real sport.

Speaker: I'm sorry, blast and bullets belong to Baltimore. So yeah. It's a zero. It's a major league. You can't just take a name like that. The MLIS.

Speaker: All right. The Utah caribou. Uh, ooh, you, you, you, uh, you, uh, you, you have foreshadowed caribou, not a bad word. Um,

Speaker: Didn't the Edmonton Elks have to change their mascot to something else? They could use the elk. Nobody would know. Caribou. Is it a Caribou, Jimmy? Caribou is pretty good. They operate in herds. They operate in herds. They're proficient on ice, I suppose.

Speaker: I think it's a pretty solid, but not amazing name. I'd go with five. Yeah, it's better than a five. It's a seven. Seven. Yeah. Seven. Interesting. They're genuinely indigenous to North America, unlike penguins. And it doesn't have the double meaning of mammoth, so it's not that good. Utah Blizzard.

Speaker: That's an ice cream. Okay. If they come out upside down, I'm in. We've been using this name in video hockey for 15 years. We know it's a good name, but with Baltimore, there's the alliteration. Yeah. Is this a shameless attempt to get Dairy Queen sponsorship? Is that what's going on? It could be. Does that make it more metal? It makes it more crass for sure, which could be metal.

Speaker: You know, whenever I go to Dairy Queen and order a Blizzard, they turn upside down. I always say, what the hell are you doing? That's my ice cream. Didn't you tell me once that the first time they did that, you said that for real? No, it was, it was still a bit. I knew, I knew they did it, but I did it very little. I misremembered your story then. I did it very loudly and everyone in the store was scandalized. They were like, he doesn't know that they do it upside down.

Speaker: All right. Well, now I want ice cream. So I'm going to go with six six. Yeah. All right. Uh, you know that the, the, the beehive thing, they got going on over there. Yeah. That really is the Utah swarm.

Speaker: Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. That's not the trendy, poor old thing. Yeah. Warm. It's an oblique, like a Deseret, Utah Mormon thing. That's probably good for the home team. Hmm, that's pretty strong. I like it. I think it...

Speaker: It ties it into the local people and it's the most menacing version of it. Yeah, actually it's an eight. Yeah, that's really, I mean, the only, all right, the only question I have is, is that name too good for Utah?

Speaker: Like that should be like the, why don't we call them the Utah penguins and rename them like the New York swarm. Like Pittsburgh can be the Rangers and you're talking to me, the penguins and where do bees go when they're not swarming? Uh, the hive Utah hive. No, that one sucks. What the fuck bro. Oh,

Speaker: I'm distracted by this paragraph that has some good stuff in there. Utah hive, terrible. That's a three. Everything we said that applies to swarm also applies to hive and yet it's horrible. Utah outlaws, almost rhymes. I guess they hate.

Speaker: their in -house announcer, their broadcast team, their fans, the whole operation of ESPN. The Utah outlaws, no, no, that's dumb. Have someone say them out loud. Don't just type them on a screen. Utah outlaw, no, no, double zero. That's unsayable. I'd give it a two.

Speaker: Yeah, I'm going to go with three. So you have to give it a one. All right. There we go. This works. Those are the rules. All right. This is, uh, no, I'm not going to give you context at all. Okay. The next one is Utah Yeti. Utah Yeti. Is that with a U or a Y? It's with a Y, but I like the alliteration. Utah Yeti. I mean, and Yetis are monsters.

Speaker: And I think there's a lot of ground there. But they're specifically Himalayan monsters. I'd go eight on that one. What? Bigfoot Bigfoot. He's not yet either. No, he's a Sasquatch.

Speaker: Yeah. Yetis are like, yeah, again, they, they, they have, I mean, I don't, I don't want to get all political, Doug, but they've chosen the non indigenous, non native American version when there's a perfectly good American gigantic, they could have gone with, but it doesn't sound like Utah. I was fortunate cultural appropriation.

Speaker: There's no alliteration. I'm still sticking with eight. What are you going to give it? I mean, I'll give it an eight under protest. I'll give it a six. Seven it is. All right. Utah Squall. Squall? Yeah, like a tiny storm. Wait, wait, wait. Is Utah? Isn't that like a water, a water thing? Yeah.

Speaker: I think someone told Utah at some point they were a coastal state and they never bothered to check. Have you seen the Great Salt Lake? It is huge. Maybe someone believed they were on the coast. I guess. Squall sucks. I think it's a one.

Speaker: But I mean it borders on a racist term that is probably still in use in the state of Utah. I didn't even think of that. Oh yeah. Okay. No, that's, that's, I don't think they were going for that angle, but I won't. They sure set it up. You know, like this great salt lake isn't even in your top, like Western, uh, drainage basin lakes, like Havasu and Tahoe kill the great salt lake.

Speaker: It's all they got. It's all they got. All right. Utah fury. Well, uh.

Speaker: Oh, it's awfully close to Utah Furry. That's what I was thinking. It's too easy to make fun of them. Yeah, Fury. It also conjures up like blood libel and under the banner of heaven. And it kind of things, I think probably Utah team would not want to bring up. It's going to be confusing when the caps say unleash the Furies. Like, well, Utah's like, OK, then I'm for this name, then.

Speaker: Oh yeah. Solid six on that basis alone. I forgot that Doug has a 25 year old feud with Tom green. It's the only thing he has left. When's the last time anyone's thought of Tom green? I mean, really. All right. Caps game. We got one four or six or five or what? Four. I would say four. Four. All right. Utah glaciers.

Speaker: Well, they're melting. So that seems inappropriate. Of the half -assed skiing mountain related ones, other than the frost, this is like a five. It's fine. Glaciers are slow. It's better than frost and freeze. So I have to go six.

Speaker: I mean, I guess glaciers are imposing. You know, if you really wanted a good mountain related name for a team, I would go with Avla. Oh, right. That was already done. The glaciers have crevasses that kill people. I mean, the crevasse, the huge crevasse. The last head glacier is 11 ,700 years ago.

Speaker: All right, well, I'll give it a six anyway. I bet there were mammoths around those glaciers, though. Utah canyons. Oh, fuck you. Oh, God. What? It's it's poor old canyons, canyons, canyons, canyons.

Speaker: I don't know, canyons? That's like a Pittsburgh joke. What's that? I mean, get ready for every Penn's fan to say that. I don't know, canyons. That's a one. That's a one. Oh, I didn't know I did a keyboard shortcut. Hey, how about that? All right, canyons.

Speaker: The AI isn't lying to me. All of these specific Canyon names are better than just calling it Canyon. Yeah. Throw me an example. Zion Canyon. Hell, yes. Red Canyon. Yes. San Rafael Swell. What? Slot Canyons?

Speaker: but buckskin valley bucks Utah goblins done and done. All right. Utah venom is the next one. Uh, uh, zero brought to you by Sony pictures. Uh, Tom Hardy is the Utah venom. Uh, no, I'm sorry. Oh, cause well,

Speaker: I imagine a snake or a scorpion or a tarantula maybe would be the mascot. Go with Utah carnage. The Utah symbiote. It's a bad name. They shouldn't use it.

Speaker: It's better than many of these. I think it depends on their color scheme. I'm thinking dark purple and like a fluorescent green. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, basically Baltimore Raven's black and white though. Right. Well, I'm going to give it a conditional two then. How about that? That seems fair. All right. And are they going to finish strong with the 20th one? I bet not. I don't know. Cause they came up 20th option.

Speaker: Utah ice. I am not kidding. I am. I am very close to just leaving. The Utah ice. Well, what should I expect in this hockey game? Well, they're called the ice.

Speaker: I mean, we can't be inconsistent with what we gave Frost or Freeze. It's just as bad or good. I think it's much worse. Ice is something in hockey you're not supposed to do. And it's also the name of a brutal immigration enforcement agency. And back to the announcers,

Speaker: The ice, the ice, shoot the length of the ice and the ice, ice the puck. It doesn't work. How are you going to be a check?

Speaker: a Czech lineman, worried about your visa forms coming through and your name of your team is fucking ice. You're thinking about it all the time. You're just, how are you? The guy who came up with powder, the same guy who came up with ice. Emotional trauma. Yeah. Wait, glaciers. I was not respectful. They're sitting in salt lake. They're like glaciers, glaciers, ice. And they're like, I like it. All right.

Speaker: Let's throw a score on the ice. Then we need to break some ties so we can do the top five. Okay. Three, three, three. Yeah. Three letters, three points. Okay. Uh, what is rank these and I will award a 10th of a point to the winner and subtract 10th of a point to the loser. Okay. Rank black diamond, caribou and yeti. What's the best. What's the worst caribou is the best black diamond is the worst.

Speaker: Do you agree? Uh, uh, Yadi is the worst. Black Diamond is the best. Well, we've solved nothing. Oh, okay. Well, we know, we know definitively that one of them's in the middle.

Speaker: It should be like a Wade, we should do like a Wade ranking now. All right. No, no, no. We're going to leave that time in place because the real, you know, the real, uh, winner is number one and two, right? So mammoth, Utah mammoth, or Utah swarm. For me, it's mammoth all the way.

Speaker: Oh, for me, you just can't ignore that local connection with the swarm. They could come out of that beehive, they could project the flag onto the ice, they could dig a hole in center ice, and they all pop out and frenetically skate around. And they got yellow and black striped uniforms. Okay, also - It just seems too college sports, though. I'm going with mammoth. But, but, but, but.

Speaker: Ladies and gentlemen, your Utah mama. It's not so great. Ladies and gentlemen, get on your feet for your Utah storm. It's much better on the storm. Whatever. Storm, same, same deal. I'm going to award the 10th of a point to the mammoth. All right. Here are your top five. Top five.

Speaker: Tied in third is Utah Black Diamonds, Utah Caribou, and Utah Yeti. Second, most medal of the choices is the Utah Swarm. And your winner, to the surprise of no one, because you've been paying attention, the Utah Mammoth. So there you go, Utah. Send that check to podcasting down. And American money, not Mormon money. Yeah. Uh -huh.

Speaker: And not, yeah. And don't leak our lineage details, thank you. All right, until next time, Metal Nation, keep your bees swarming and they can't take down a mammoth. They'll just step on them and they're hot.

Speaker: But game four of the PWHL final, Minnesota scored. But they called it back. They reviewed it after the team celebrated on the ice. What? You can't do that. They reviewed the goal, declared goaltender interference, which was the right call.

Speaker: if it wasn't game four and Boston was about to lose the series. No. So Boston scored in overtime. Then they went to game five. So Minnesota got to win in Boston. So it was good. It's like a double fuck you to Boston. Give them hope and then take it away. Oh, and they shut up Boston. Wow. Boston though.