The saga of the Utah Hockey Club is humorously frustrating.

The Smith Entertainment Group (SEG) bought the old Arizona Coyotes at the end of last season with one little caveat -- the city of Phoenix would retain the rights to the nickname Coyotes.

No problem, right?

Utah has plenty of cool stuff to name a team for, and the SEG did what most management groups would, holding a contest and fan voting for a new name.

The process dragged out and without time to select and market a new name, the SEG decided to let the team play under the moniker "Utah Hockey Club" for its first year (much like Washington's NFL football team, which stayed as the Washington Football team after dropping the "Redskins" name. They are now the Washington Commanders).

Eventually the poll wrapped up with seemingly Blizzards and Outlaws being the most popular names, the SEG announced that the finalists were Yeti, Outlaws, Mammoth, Venom, Blizzard (no 'S') and Utah Hockey Club.

Early this week, the story broke that the SEG had applied for a trademark with the US Patent and Trademark bureau for the nickname "Yeti," but had been denied as the Yeti Cooler Company declined to share the name.

So a few days ago, the SEG told fans that a new nickname (Yeti, apparently was out for good) would be selected based on fan votes for three potential names: Utah Hockey Club, Utah Mammoth and Utah Wasatch.

Surprisingly, two of the more popular names, Outlaws and Venom, were not included.

And then today, on the news wire, this popped up:

"The Utah Hockey Club is moving on from "Utah Wasatch" in favor of "Utah Outlaws" in the in-arena fan vote for the team's permanent nicknameThe vote began Wednesday against the Pittsburgh Penguins with "Utah Hockey Club," "Utah Mammoth" and "Utah Wasatch" as the optionsThe team decided to switch from "Wasatch" to "Outlaws" after initial results showed minimal support for "Wasatch."  "Outlaws" was one of the 20 nicknames originally chosen for a fan survey last yearIt was one of six finalists the fans chose."

So out goes Wasatch, in goes Outlaws. It seems no one wanted to be a fan of the Utah Wasatch.

Outlaws will likely win, although Mammoth (why no 'S'?) has received some support, cause, you know, Wooly Mammoths are cool.

Fans have three more games to actually attend and vote (no online poll this time).

Unless SEG changes its mind again.

* Note -- I really liked Utah Blizzards until they dropped the 'S' and made it singular instead of plural and even voted for that, but Blizzards (or Blizzard) didn't make the cut.

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