Oh, the drama, the uncertainty, the sheer anxiety of it all …

Blizzard or Moose or Cutthroats or Yetis?

Swarm or Saints or Venom or Fury?

Suggestions have been bland, like Hockey Club.

Or geometrical, like Slopes.

Or so absurd they are funny, like H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks.

Yes, now that Utah is officially getting a top-tier professional hockey team that has no official name or mascot, everyone has their own ideas of what it should be called.

I see a lot of the ideas people have come up with and most make me cringe. Saints is too polarizing. Moose aren’t particularly graceful. Swarm is too close to Bees or Buzz.

For what it’s worth, I’d prefer something with at least some creativity but not too over-the-top.

The one I lean toward that has cropped up the most is Outlaws, which hearkens back to quite a bit of state history and could have some fun merchandise.

But if it was just up to me, I’d be tempted to go with one that I saw suggested on social media: Utah Hoodoos.

Give me a rock monster mascot like The Thing from the Marvel Universe and honor the fantastic rock formations that make southern Utah so incredibly artistic.

But as much fun as the mascot or team name conversation is, we can all agree that it’s ultimately just cosmetic.

Maybe it will make a difference in the bottom line when it comes to selling hoodies and mugs, but it certainly won’t determine whether this team will be a success.

Determining that will be a lot more complicated, in my opinion.

This is the second time I’ve seen an NHL team relocate to my area. I lived in the Denver metro area when the Quebec Nordiques left Canada in May of 1995 and became the Colorado Avalanche.

Until that point, I’d never been interested in hockey. I had a basic understanding of the rules but no real connection to the sport.

Suddenly there was a local team to be interested in, one that had exciting players like Joe Sakic, Peter Forsberg, and Adam Foote. Later in 1995, the Avs traded for arguably the greatest goalkeeper of all time, Patrick Roy, and suddenly the new hometown team was on its way to winning the 1996 Stanley Cup.

Now, almost 30 years later, I’m watching it happen again, this time in Salt Lake City. Instead of the Nordiques, it is the Arizona Coyotes who are coming to town.

While there are certainly similarities, I see some significant differences.

The first is in on-ice success.

In their last season in Quebec, the Nordiques finished with the second-best overall record in the strike-shortened season and won their division.

The Coyotes … didn’t.

Arizona ended this last year with a 36-41-5 record, the sixth-worst record in the NHL.

While the new Avalanche team brought quite a bit of optimism (and fulfilled it with their performance), the new Utah team looks to be in rebuilding mode with no telling when it will become competitive.

There is also the basic numbers to consider and they aren’t insignificant.

The Denver metro population was around 1.75 million in 1995, while Salt Lake City’s current metro population is closer to 1.2 million, almost 40% less.

That means there are fewer people who could potentially become hockey fans in Utah than there were when Denver got its team.

On the flip side, Denver already had pro football (the Broncos), pro basketball (the Nuggets) and pro baseball (the Rockies) in the “Big 4” of American pro sports franchises.

In comparison, Utah only has pro basketball (the Jazz) to compete with and area fans have certainly been dedicated to supporting the team they had.

But will they do so for hockey?

I’m just not sure yet.

Pro-hockey supporters will point to the reported 22,700 season ticket deposits that have already been received for the new team as evidence that the market is hungry for the sport.

It’s easy, though, to get excited in Year 1. It’s new and fresh and exciting.

But what will the numbers be like in Years 2, 3, and 4, particularly if the team is losing a lot? Will the newness wear off and result in a lot of empty seats?

This is a state that has a limited hockey tradition.

There are less than a dozen hockey rinks in the Wasatch Front-area and the AA hockey team, the Utah Grizzlies, have averaged only around 5,000 fans per game in the last three years.

But seeing hockey live is a thrilling experience, arguably the best of all major sports.

It combines the up-and-down thrill of basketball with the premium scoring feel of soccer and the physicality of football.

Frankly, I hope the new Utah NHL team thrives. I hope Utahns continue to support it — win or lose — and that eventually it becomes a contender, regardless of what name it ends up with.

I just don’t want to be five or 10 years down the road and find myself calling it the “Utah Failures.”

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