Last night, the ECHL’s Kansas City Mavericks unveiled updated brand marks for the 2020-21 season, placing an emphasis on orange as their primary accent color.

Icethetics reached out to Brian McGannon, the team’s director of communications, for the story behind the redesign.

“We are coming into the 12th year of our existence, which makes us the longest tenured continuous running hockey team in the history of Kansas City,” said McGannon. “We wanted to refresh our brand by making it bolder. Orange is such a huge part of our brand identity, so we wanted to make it pop even more, which is why we removed the blue and replaced it with gray.”

As you can see in the primary logo above, the roundel has remained, but a new “branded font” has been introduced across the bottom. Here’s a comparison between the old and new logos.

“The powder blue has been with us since day one and at one point was our main color,” McGannon added. “We felt like we needed to distinguish ourselves further by dropping the blue and committing to one bold color.”

While the horse remains as the centerpiece of the team’s identity, it’s clear in the side-by-side comparison that the shape has changed a bit.

On Twitter, the team described the redesigned horse as having “bold accents and [a] wider neck.” But it’s not just the neck. The entire logo has been widened from the original version—which had been in use since 2009.

Also revealed Tuesday was a new “KC” ligature mark, which the team says “solidifies our identity as Kansas City’s professional hockey team, uniting the 816 and 913,” referring to the local area codes.

McGannon tells me the updated logos were designed by Geoff Hastings of Tangent Creative, an agency based in Des Moines, Iowa.

Today, the team announced via Twitter that the corresponding new uniforms will be unveiled tomorrow.

Now comes the part where I offer a little historical context.

The Mavericks’ branding has evolved over the years. They originally joined the Central Hockey League as an expansion team in 2009, named the Missouri Mavericks. This was their logo, which included a full-bodied anthropomorphic hockey-playing horse.

In 2014, when the CHL ceased operations, the Mavs were one of seven teams that transferred to the ECHL. Then in 2017, the team was renamed for Kansas City,  though their arena is in a suburb called Independence, Missouri.

So what do you think of the new look of the Kansas City Mavericks?