'Good, bad and ugly': Love them or not, the new PWHL names give teams — and fans — identities

The Fleet, the Frost, the Victoire, the Sirens, the Charge and the Sceptres.

In a process nearly a year in the making, the Professional Women's Hockey League on Monday unveiled the nicknames and logos for each of its six franchises entering its second season.

The public, inevitably, is already expressing their opinions for and against the new branding on social media, where some people say the Toronto Sceptres is "giving Swedish royalty," the Ottawa Charge looks too similar to the Calgary Flames, while the Montreal Victoire is seen by some as "the best logo in the league."

"I love the name 'Victoire.' I think it's very Montreal. It's a city where we are very competitive and we want to win," Montreal forward Catherine Dubois told CBC Montreal.

"It's been amazing to see that we finally have a name, and I think the name is just going to grow. It's incredible that we can finally say that we're La Victoire de Montreal.

Women's sports and marketing experts say not only do they like the logos, but what's important is that the teams now have proper identities — and that more jerseys and other merch will follow. The PWHL, a first-of-its-kind women's league with deep-pocketed investors, shattered women's hockey attendance records in a short-notice first year.

"To me, the important step for strategic sport marketing, and really the health of women's sport in the country, is that it gives us an identity," said Cheri Bradish, an associate professor in sports marketing at Toronto Metropolitan University.

"They can build more branding campaigns. Fans and consumers can not only be active online socially, but it really just allows the property to come to life and speak to consumers in inevitably what will be a richer way," Bradish,