Welcome to the NHL, Seattle Kraken

Last night, Seattle’s NHL franchise posted this promo video for their team name reveal.

I won’t lie, with all of the fishing imagery and the sea blue and salmon color scheme on the team’s website, I was pretty sure that today’s name announcement would be the Sockeye. Sure, fish aren’t exactly intimidating, but have you ever seen a sockeye salmon? They’re one ugly cuss.

That’s a mug made for hockey right there.

Today, the Western Conference’s newest team debuted their branding, and it wasn’t what a lot of people expected - it was what a lot of people hoped for:

The Kraken have been released.

For those of you wondering what the hell a kraken is, it’s a mythological deep sea monster that got its start in Norse mythology, and the lore spread to sailors around the North Atlantic. It got more mainstream with Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem “The Kraken” and pops up again later on as a description of what were probably giant squid in both Moby Dick and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (thanks, Wikipedia).

The modern fascination with it comes from just one line in the God-awful 2010 movie Clash of the Titans:

I do not know many people who have seen the movie past this one clip. I think I’ve been subjected to maybe 20 minutes of it and I couldn’t do it.

But as is often the case, awful cinema gives us great pop culture, and now pop culture has given us the name of the newest NHL franchise.

Welcome back to the NHL, Seattle. It’s been a while. Can’t wait to see you and these excellent jerseys in St. Louis.

Now, we await the expansion draft and possible divisional re-alignment, unless the NHL wants nine teams in the Pacific Division and seven in the Central.