It's namin' time!

 The Phoenix Coyotes are officially toast on a stick, or maybe predator on a stick, and now the fun begins. Their new home will be Salt Lake City, and the team will go under the simple moniker "Utah" for its first season, but already the first submissions for a new nickname have been filed with the NHL office.

Here are your choices so far, America:

Utah Blizzard.

Utah Venom.

Utah Fury.

Utah HC.

Utah Hockey Club.

"Those all suck!" you're undoubtedly saying now.

Well, yes. Yes, they do.

Blizzard, to start with, is just another way of saying "Avalanche", and Colorado already has that one locked up. So it would violate the Territorial Rights To Winter-Weather Nicknames Rule, which I just made up. Although it's probably why the ECHL Utah Grizzlies are named the Grizzlies and not, say, the Utah Wintry Mix.

Utah HC, meanwhile, is a soccer name. The team won't be playing West Ham or Aston Villa any time soon, so that's out.

Venom? Meh. Fury? Meh. Utah Hockey Club?

"We already did that!" say the Washington Commanders, formerly the Washington Football Club.

So what should the team be called?

Well, let's start by thinking about some things for which Utah is known.

(Long pause while we all try to think of some things for which Utah is known)

(Longer pause)

(Reaaaallly long pause)

"I know!" you say at last. "Mormons!"

Well, yes. And someone's already suggested the Stormin' Mormons. But the Mormons might object to such trivialization of their religious beliefs, and they'd be right. It's why you don't see many Perturbed Presbyterians, Moody Methodists or  Battlin' Baptists in professional sports.

So what else is Utah known for?

Well, it's got some stunning national parks, to start with: Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Arches. It's got the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. It's got mountains and valleys and the Great Salt Lake, and ... mountains and valleys and the Great Salt Lake.

Also the Bonneville Salt Flats, where so many lands-speed records have been set. So I guess you could call the team the Utah Speed, but what would the logo look like?

(Then again, what do a lot of team logos look like these days? Like Picasso crashed head-on into Dali and then dropped acid with Jackson Pollock, that's what.)

Now, lots of suggestions have been thrown out there on the Magic Twitter Machine, some of them really bad and some of them actually quite clever. One of the more notable is the Utah Crawfish, which its author noted would play into the New Orleans appropriation theme begun when the NBA's Utah Jazz moved from New Orleans and no one cared enough to change the name.

Me?

Well, right now I'm thinking of the Salt Lake Buzz, the original name of the Salt Lake Bees, Utah's Triple-A baseball team. Both play off the fact Utah is the Beehive State, which of course opens up a bunch of possibilities.

I'm thinking the B's would work.

The Utah B's! (Or the Fightin' B's, because it's a Blob article of faith that every nickname is improved by adding "Fightin'" to it). The logo could be a fierce-looking capital B with glaring red eyes and a hockey stick. The mascot could be Alpha(bet) Andy, a fierce-looking cursive B.  And the team motto could be something like "The Utah B's: We Always Bring Our 'A' Game".

Questions?

"I've got one," you're saying now. "How do you manage to feed yourself?"

Very funny. And a cursive be upon you.