Back in 1998, the Wild had yet to be named. What to call Minnesota’s new NHL entry? An estimated 13,000 ideas were submitted.
Of those, there were six finalists. They were: Freeze, Northern Lights, Blue Ox, White Bears, Voyageurs and Wild.
On this day in 1998, the club went … Wild.
How did the rest of the NHL come up with their nicknames? Here’s a list, compiled by mentalfloss.com.
While the Northern Lights seemed reasonable to us, (check out the potential uniforms of the losing 5 in this Wild.com post from 2011), at least the Wild marketing team came up with a great theme song. It’s hard not to get hockey goose bumps every time you watch this:
