New Franchise... Victoria Royals

For Immediate Release

Monday, June 20, 2011

Victoria, BC – The Victoria Western Hockey League (WHL) Franchise is proud to announce that the team has selected the nickname Royals for the franchise. Additionally, the team unveiled their logo, team colours and dark jersey at a press conference at the Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre on Monday.

The name Royals was chosen after an in depth study of possible names was concluded. Fans were given a voice in the process through internet voting, emailing and social media sites. The combination of fan input along with internal and external sources determined the moniker.

“The process to choose the name was extensive,” President Dave Dakers said. “Royals was selected as it represented the most popular and unique team name. It was also a natural fit with the strong roots the city of Victoria has to the British Monarchy.”

The logo that will represent the team is a lion holding a hockey stick perched on top of the word “Royals”. The lion has a maple leaf on one of his forelegs to represent the team’s Canadian roots, and the serif coming off of the letter “R” in the word Royals creates the letter “V” that stands for Victoria.

“The lion represents common symbolism for Royals,” Dakers said. “Further a stronger image was part of the criteria for the logo for the new team. In the future, we will use other images for our third jerseys as there many options available with the nickname Royals.”

The colours for the Royals will be royal blue, black, white, red and silver. The jerseys are blue, white and black, and are the same design used by the National Hockey League’s Tampa Bay Lightning for their third jersey. The jerseys are adorned with the team logo on the front of the jersey, and a coat of arms patch on the shoulders. The coat of arms consists of the letters “VR” for Victoria Royals on the face of a shield, a crown rests a top the shield and two hockey sticks are crisscrossed behind the shield.