6000 deposits for season tickets in Salt Lake City… In two hours!

Alex Meruelo has been roundly criticized for his handling of the Arizona issue, and he’s not the most popular guy in the desert at the time of writing.

He may apologize, but if he’d done things the right way, we probably wouldn’t be where we are today…

Anyway.

The new Salt Lake City team doesn’t have a name yet, and we may have to wait for that to happen.

In fact, it gets worse: the new NHL team could start operations without having chosen a name.

How weird is that?

Why wouldn’t Ryan Smith, who also owns the Utah Jazz, want his team to have its own identity from the start?

It should also be noted that the new team will be called “Utah” and not “Salt Lake City”.

It’s also worth noting that we shouldn’t expect the club to have a mascot in its first season, according to what Greg Wyshynski reported on Twitter.

However, the club’s new colors could be unveiled next week:

Is it just me, or…

Looks like Ryan Smith just isn’t prepared for his new project?

No name, no mascot…

At least the team will be playing at the Delta Center, an amphitheater that will seat up to 12,000 next season.

The plan is to expand the arena to allow 17,000 people to attend games:

Still, the excitement is definitely there among the fans in Salt Lake City.

Why do I say that?

Because the team has already collected 6,000 deposits for season tickets… Only two hours after they went on sale.

The league must be happy with this turn of events, even if Gary Bettman did everything in his power to keep the club in Arizona :

The NHL is trying new things and that’s fine.

That said, it would be cool for the fans out there (and for the NHL) if we’d already thought about the team’s identity…

Because the 24-25 season is coming up much faster than we think.

In brief

– Possible names for the new team:

– That’s at least one…

– Well done.

– Patrick Kane loved his season in Detroit.