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How the PWHL landed on the Vancouver Goldeneyes and Seattle Torrent

Ben Steiner
Ben Steiner
Nov 6, 2025, 17:24 EST
How the PWHL landed on the Vancouver Goldeneyes and Seattle Torrent
Credit: Courtesy of the Vancouver Goldeneyes

For a process that usually takes years, the PWHL had months. They wanted team identities for the league’s first expansion teams, unlike the original six teams, which played the inaugural season under city monikers. 

Within a calendar year, Vancouver and Seattle went from drawing significant crowds at PWHL Takeover Tour games to establishing their own clubs, building rosters, and unveiling identities for fans to rally behind: the Vancouver Goldeneyes and Seattle Torrent, who will drop the puck against each other on Nov. 21.

“There’s so much meaning behind this logo and the name,” said Vancouver’s Ashton Bell. “The league or whoever created it put so much thought behind it and wanted it to be meaningful to the city and to the fans and to our group.”

While neither will don the logo or name on the jerseys, which display the city names across the front, each fanbase can instantly connect with the team in a way not seen in the first years in the PWHL. 

And as much as “Let’s Go T-O,” and other chants from Year 1 will stick in the minds of Toronto Sceptres fans, among others, Vancouver and Seattle fans won’t have that obstacle.

A quick process

For Kanan Bhatt-Shah, the PWHL’s vice president of brand and marketing and the leader of the projects, finding a name that fit each city and the rest of the PWHL’s brand identity was a priority.

“The names first really started with thinking of what feels really authentic to each of these cities, and that was really the starting point of making sure that these are names that will resonate with fans, and really embody the teams that we are bringing to these markets,” she told reporters Thursday afternoon. 

“There is a nature theme across both Seattle and Vancouver…Nature feels so ever-present, such an intrinsic part of life. That’s one of the core, foundational areas we started thinking about in terms of the naming process.”

Throughout the process, the league says it worked within communities to hear from fans, seeking names that communicated “strength, empowerment, and resilience,” while also ensuring a connection to each city. After landing on names, they consulted players. 

“Our fans, they’re incredibly passionate and they’re not shy,”  Bhatt-Shah said. “They definitely shared their thoughts on what would make incredible team names as part of this process, and when we shared the names and received feedback from the players, the feedback was incredibly positive.”

Names to fit a city

In Vancouver, the Goldeneyes become the first of the PWHL’s franchises to be named after an animal, taking the name of a duck with a darker body and a distinctive golden eye on each side of its beak. 

Common across coasts in the northern hemisphere, the Goldeneye can be found across British Columbia’s temperate rainforest, often making their homes in rivers and lakes that dot the province.  

“These birds really can have clear vision,” Goldeneyes General Manager Cara Gardner Morey said. “They soar really high, they can dive really deep. For me, they’re really resilient, but they’re also territorial, and they do everything in unity — very synchronized. For me, that’s what you’re going to see on the ice — everybody on the same page.”

While Vancouver professional teams have not stuck to a similar theme across the board, the color scheme of Pacific blue and earthy bronze stands out, while also complementing the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks, and Major League Soccer’s Vancouver Whitecaps. 

Down the I-5, the name Torrent fits within the blue and green colour palette of the city, while the name fits the nautical identity seen with the NHL’s Kraken, Major League Baseball’s Seattle Mariners, and MLS’s Seattle Sounders.

The jersey holdup

As much of a rush as it was to get names and logos for the first season, the teams will have to wait for the second year to wear jerseys, due to longer production timelines from Bauer, the PWHL’s jersey manufacturer. 

According to The Athletic, designing the generic jerseys was one of the first steps taken after awarding the expansion franchises, and the fully-fledged branded jerseys will be ready for 2026-27. 

“The timeline for Jersey development is quite a lengthy one as we think about what the crest will look like,” added Bhat-Shah, with Bauer already tackling a compressed timeline for the generic jerseys. “Our fans in those communities have really embraced PWHL Seattle and PWHL Vancouver [jerseys] and we don’t expect that to change.”

Now that names and identities are down, teams have turned their attention to the ice with the opening of training camps and quickly approaching preseason games, ahead of the third season’s opening games on Nov. 21.

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