Sports

Minnesota Frost: PWHL unveils names, logos for league champion and other teams

Fans cheer as a player throws a puck over the glass.
Maggie Flaherty of Lakeville tosses a puck over the glass young fans before the start of Game 4 of the PWHL championship series at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul on May 26.
Ben Garvin for MPR News

Minnesota’s Professional Women’s Hockey League team finally has something it didn’t during its run to the league title earlier this year: a name.

PWHL Minnesota is now the Minnesota Frost. The league announced that name — and those of the five other teams — on Monday morning.

The rest of the league includes the Boston Fleet, Montreal Victoire, New York Sirens, Ottawa Charge and Toronto Sceptres.

The PWHL also revealed the logos for each team. The Minnesota Frost, the PWHL said, “embodies the State of Hockey’s deep-rooted love for the ice,” with the “F” logo featuring sharp icicle-like points.

The long-anticipated names and logos arrive after time constraints — the league was founded in late June 2023 and began play on Jan. 1 — led to the PWHL spending its inaugural season referring to each team with a PWHL prefix, such as PWHL Minnesota, which won the first Walter Cup championship in May.

PWHL Nickname Logos Hockey
This image released by the PWHL shows the new logo for the Minnesota Frost hockey team.
Courtesy of PWHL

It was around that time when league executives Amy Scheer and Kanan Bhatt-Shaw officially signed off on the results in meeting a 10-month deadline to have the names and logos delivered to the PWHL’s suppliers to be printed in time for Season 2, set to open in early December.

“Daunting for sure, but an absolute labor of love,” Scheer, the league vice president of business operations, told the Associated Press. “I think anybody who has worked in sports or is a marketer or brand person would look at this as an opportunity of a lifetime.”

Just don’t ask them to pick a favorite.

“I love all my children equally,” Scheer said with a laugh.

“I’m going to echo that,” added Bhatt-Shaw, VP of brand and marketing. “In real life, I only have one child, and it feels really nice to have seven now.”

PWHL Nickname Logos Hockey
This image released by the PWHL shows the new logos for the league's six hockey teams, announced Monday.
Courtesy of PWHL

Calling the process both stressful and rewarding, the two were tasked with filtering through hundreds of possible names — many of which were eliminated because the PWHL was unable to obtain rights holdings on both sides of the border — designing the logos and finding the right fit to capture the spirit of each market.

Another caveat was carrying over each team’s color schemes from Year 1 for continuity so fans who purchased previous merchandise didn’t look out of place.

The PWHL worked with New York City-based creative agency Flower Shop to assist in the process. Scheer and Bhatt-Shaw also bounced ideas off a group of PWHL employees, who would vote on potential names, and the two spent last season consulting with fans to get a feel for each market.