The Kraken are making waves this NHL postseason.
Seattle is in the midst of the franchise's first playoff run. The Kraken knocked out the defending Stanley Cup champion Avalanche in the first round and are currently battling the Stars in the second round.
The team has one of the most unique nicknames in hockey. While the Kraken have been around for two seasons now, they are still extremely new to the sporting scene.
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So what exactly is a Kraken? The Sporting News explains the meaning behind the nickname of Seattle's NHL club.
What is a Kraken?
The Kraken is a mythological creature stemming from Norse folklore. It supposedly lived in the seas off the coasts of Norway and Iceland.
There are mythical tales told of the Kraken, which may have been based on a real animal. It's likely that sailors who told these stories spotted giant squids, which have long tentacles and live deep in the sea. On occasion, these giant squids were known to surface the water and attack ships.
The creature became part of literary fame in 1830 when Alfred Tennyson published "The Kraken", a sonnet that described a large sea creature that lived in the depths of the ocean. It was only seen when it would come to the surface to attack ships, similar to the giant squids.
The word, "Kraken", comes from the German word for octopus, "Krake".
Why is Seattle called the Kraken?
When the Seattle club was in the first stages of figuring out a team name, a Post-It note delivered a simple message to the front door of their offices in downtown Seattle in 2018.
"Release the Kraken."
"That may have been the first time I heard or thought of 'Kraken,'" Heidi Dettmer, Seattle's vice president of marketing, said to ESPN in 2020. "But throughout this whole process, it's been a rallying cry for fans. We heard it everywhere. It's what kept coming up over and over again."
The organization was adamant about having fans involved in the process of selecting a team nickname. The Kraken popped up early in the process and fans ran with it.
According to Andy Jassy, a part owner of the team and the CEO of Amazon Web Services, the team looked at over 1,200 names and conducted a "real exploration" on more than 100. The club also monitored a Seattle Times reader pool, which had more than 146,000 votes.
"It's a very unique and unusual name in sports, because almost all sport franchises end with an 's,'" Jassy said. "There are a lot of obvious connections to Seattle - part because of our maritime history, part of because we have so much water around us - but there is longtime folklore in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest of this mystical Kraken creature that lives just below the surface of the sea, which really captivated people for many years."
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The Metropolitans were considered, which was the name of the city's original hockey team in the early 1900s. However, since the league already has the Metropolitan Division, the NHL pushed back on that idea. Some of the other finalists were Totems and Sockeyes.
Ultimately, the fans spoke, the NHL club listened and the organization settled on the Kraken.
What is the Kraken's mascot?
The Kraken's mascot is Buoy the sea troll.
He was inspired by the Fremont Troll, a public sculpture that is underneath the Aurora Bridge in Seattle. In fact, the Kraken claim that Buoy is the nephew of the Fremont Troll.
To the team's knowledge, it is the first mascot in North American professional sports to be a troll. The team did not want to use an octopus as the Red Wings currently have Al the Octopus as its mascot. The club also did not want to use a Kraken as the mascot because no one is actually sure what it looks like.
