Readers suggest 10 more names for Minnesota’s championship-winning hockey team

We asked. You answered.

After PWHL Minnesota took home the inaugural Walter Cup last month, we drew up a list of 10 potential names for the winningest team in the league.

The initial batch of Professional Women’s Hockey League teams took to the ice without official names. Each squad adopted official colors and competed under the banner of the state or city they’re based in for the league’s first season.

So we asked readers to submit their own suggested monikers. Here are 10 of the best.

Although Minnesota can’t technically claim a tundra — the Department of Natural Resources lists two forests, a grassland and a parkland as the state’s four official biomes — it’s certainly known for its often low winter temperatures. Just don’t mention anything to the PWHL’s three Canada-based teams.

The state fish isn’t particularly fierce or intimidating. But three readers chimed in to suggest naming Minnesota’s championship-winning PWHL team after the walleye and that’s pretty dang hard to ignore.

Minnesota Frost has a nice ring to it. The same reader who suggested this name also tossed Minnesota Ice Brigade into the mix.

Minnesotans sure are proud of the official state flower, if the two folks who wrote in to suggest it as PWHL Minnesota’s new, permanent name are any indication. The flower is already the right colors — a logo and mascot should be easy to draw up.

Much like our previous suggestion of the Minnesota Opes, the Over Derrs would politely ask their opponents to just, if they have a moment, take a gander at the far side of the ice. Then score!

The team’s official colors of purple, black and white already come close to something resembling mauve. Imagine calling the team the Mauve Marauders — and ending every winning game with a chant of “mischief managed.” (If you know, you know.)

We already have a women’s soccer club that goes by Aurora. But this alternative name for that magnetic phenomenon works just as well. Imagine if the folks at Xcel Energy Center outfitted the facility so that every successful goal prompts a spectacular light show in the rafters.

A frosty take on the age-old notion of “Minnesota nice,” this pun was too fun to ignore. The branding possibilities are endless. The X could hawk special walleye-flavored Minnesota Icees. Or maybe go with a Honeycrisp apple flavor in honor of the official state fruit.

We already have the Minnesota Wild. Why not name another hockey team after a similarly ethereal word that can be both noun and adjective? The alliteration alone makes this one a winner.

The common loon is our official state bird, but mosquitoes come in a close second if every dad-joke-telling Minnesotan is to be believed. While this doesn’t make for a particularly elegant mascot, it’s tough to argue that pronouncing “skeeter” with that slight northern drawl doesn’t sound a lot like “skater.” And that’s enough for this proposed moniker to warrant consideration.