After playing the 2024-25 season as the Utah Hockey Club, the franchise is planning on announcing a new name ahead of the 2025-26 season. But the team’s YouTube page might have spoiled the new name a little earlier than planned.
“Mammoth” was one of the final names. But as Greg Wyshynski of ESPN reported on Wednesday, it may go deeper than that.
“Fans and media noticed that the channel’s handle was changed from ‘@UtahHockeyClub’ to ‘@UtahMammoth,’ on both its landing page and URL,” Wyshynski wrote. “The channel was soon deactivated and remained so on Wednesday morning, but not before screenshots of the name change went viral.”
Indeed, screengrabs were grabbed before the mistake was realized.
Utah Hockey Club’s official YouTube page now shows UtahMammoth 🦣 pic.twitter.com/pi4CU5tDCb
— Cole Bagley (@BagleyKSLsports) April 30, 2025
Looks like YouTube handle has officially given away Mammoth as team name in Utah.
The teams YT url is now https://t.co/sEm4SrJswc pic.twitter.com/XIi0jh7lfA
— Sean Shapiro (@seanshapiro) April 30, 2025
Lindsay Aerts of KTVX, Salt Lake City’s ABC affiliate, discussed the matter with Mike Maughan, an executive with Smith Entertainment Group, which owns the Utah Hockey Club. Aerts asked Maughan if he could “address why the YouTube channel, yesterday, said Utah Mammoths on it.”
“Progress continues on exploring all three of the name options that were chosen as finalists by our fans,” Maughan said. “We’re fully on track to announce a permanent name and identity ahead of the 25-26 NHL season and look forward to sharing that with our fans when we do.”
When asked again if he had an explanation as to why that specific name was up, Maughan repeated, “We’re fully on track to announce a permanent name and identity ahead of the 25-26 NHL season.”
FANS ARE WONDERING? The @utahhockeyclub‘s YouTube channel mysteriously had @ UtahMammoth as its handle for a time last night, then the page came down. I asked SEG exec @MikeMaughan why. @abc4utah pic.twitter.com/fPJXCYxIyL
— Lindsay Aerts (@LindsayOnAir) April 30, 2025
Officially, the Utah Hockey Club is an expansion team that just completed its first season. Following the 2023-24 season, the assets of the Arizona Coyotes were bought by the Utah Hockey Club and used to form a new franchise, similar to what the NFL did with the Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens following the 1995 season. In another NFL parallel, the Utah Hockey Club operated under that name for the 2024-25 season in the same way that the team now known as the Washington Commanders was known as the Washington Football Team in 2020 and 2021.
In addition to being the temporary name, Utah Hockey Club is one of the three finalists for the team’s permanent name. The other finalists are the Utah Mammoth and Utah Outlaws.
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