When the Skilled Ladies’s Hockey League (PWHL) started its inaugural season this previous January, every of its six groups have been represented solely by a shade and metropolis title. However this season, gamers will hit the ice with customized jerseys, distinctive logos, and group names to name their very own—and followers can sport them, too, with new team jerseys available to purchase online now and in shops Thursday.
The PWHL, which was simply based in summer season 2023, is a cross-border league representing groups from Boston, Minnesota, New York Metropolis, Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto. And it’s already heating up. It drew close to 400,000 total fans throughout 72 video games in its first season, and it additionally set a world report for attendance at a ladies’s hockey recreation with over 21,000 attendees. After all, alongside the primary season’s success got here an inflow of latest followers, lots of whom have been wanting to characterize their favourite group—and generic merch simply wouldn’t minimize it.
The league sought to satisfy that demand, and in lower than a yr, it developed distinctive logos, names, and jerseys for all six groups without delay. In brief, the PWHL pulled off an enormous branding feat. The step not solely builds out the visible identities of every group’s fanbase, but in addition helps to usher the league onto the nationwide stage.
Similar PWHL, new names
The demand from followers for “conventional group nicknames and identities” was clear after just some video games, in accordance with Kanan Bhatt-Shah, the PWHL’s VP of promoting, so Bhatt-Shah’s group introduced on New York Metropolis design company Flower Shop and set to work growing every group’s branding quickly after the primary pucks hit the ice across the finish of January.
They have been engaged on a breakneck timeline. Jersey art work for the 2025 season was due in early Could—that means that the PWHL and Flower Store would have nearly three months to finalize names, logos, and, lastly, jerseys for all six groups.
Group names have been the primary precedence of the PWHL branding initiative. The PWHL and Flower Store labored collectively to determine IP-safe names that might have historic ties to every particular person metropolis, a chant-able high quality, and a component of timelessness.
“These are sports activities groups that we hope might be round so long as we’re, and they also should be timeless,” says Al Merry, CCO of Flower Store. “We’d have a look at Ottawa or have a look at Boston and say, ‘Okay, what is exclusive to the town and its folks, and what will resonate now and without end with them and never be a passing fad?’” Options together with metropolis structure, seasons, ambiance, and historical past have been high issues.
After much deliberation, the ultimate decisions have been Boston Fleet, for the town’s maritime previous; Minnesota Frost, for its notoriously chilly winters; Montreal Victoire, for a historical past of ice hockey success; New York Sirens, for the town’s singular ambient sound; Ottawa Cost, for the motto “Advance—Ottawa—En Avant”; and Toronto Sceptres, as a reference to the outdated moniker “Queen Metropolis.”
Designing six distinctive groups
Then got here the emblem and wordmark designs. To get a real really feel for every metropolis, Merry and his group carried out each archival and in-person analysis. In addition they noticed the groups play in-person to get a really feel for the group and its followers.
“I bear in mind going to the Ottawa Public Library in the course of winter, and we have been sitting there surrounded by Margaret Atwood books and the typography that she used—we have been looking out excessive and low for items of the town, items of structure, items of artwork,” Merry says.
“The place we ended up, by way of ‘Cost,’ was this electrifying pressure that was impressed by going to the stadium, being within the area, and feeling this pressure reverberating all through,” he says. Ottowa’s emblem—an electrified crimson and yellow “C”—relies on the vitality Merry’s group felt within the stands that evening.
He has related tales for many of the different groups. Boston’s emblem, for instance, is a stylized serif “B” that mimics an anchor as a callback to Boston’s historical past as a port metropolis—however the reference to a fleet of ships can also be meant to replicate the group’s distinctive taking part in fashion.
“We may see that there was a power and unity within the squad of gamers that have been taking to the ice,” Merry says. “It was one thing that stored developing once we talked to the followers. . . . The fleet being collectively, this group of ships—or on this case, gamers coming collectively—it wasn’t an enormous leap.”
Different easter eggs are sprinkled all through the designs, like a blue hidden “M” within the Montreal Victoire’s emblem and a daring, blocky “NY” graphic behind the New York Sirens’ wordmark.
However there may be some throughline to the groups’ unique appears to be like. To take care of followers’ visible associations with every group, Flower Store used the colour schemes that PWHL had assigned to every metropolis in the course of the inaugural season. ”So lots of our followers had purchased merch and jerseys in season one, and we wished to be sure that they felt very a lot on model and felt that sense of belonging going into season two, with up to date group identities and names,” Bhatt-Shah says.
Jerseys that groups and followers can love
Now followers may have a considerably wider choice of merch to select from. The PWHL labored with Flower Store to switch its designs onto a variety of attire and collectibles for the league’s retailer, along with the finalized official jerseys. Every jersey has the group’s emblem on the entrance and striping particulars on the hem and cuffs, and is available in an alternate colorway.
“On the one hand, ranging from a clean slate permits for a lot artistic freedom, however however, the shortage of historical past or fan expectations creates a singular problem,” Merry says. “A jersey is a logo of delight. Followers have a deep emotional connection to their group’s look, and getting that proper requires steadiness between originality and authenticity.”
It’s a testomony to the PWHL’s advertising and marketing and gamers that the league was in a position to appeal to such a big following in its first season with out distinctive group branding. Now, although, in an period when professional women’s sports seem to finally be receiving greater visibility, the PWHL branding overhaul represents a serious funding in legitimizing the league and constructing it into one thing that may proceed to develop for years to return.