The pessimist in me thinks there's a decent chance they'll just stick with Utah Hockey Club. I mean, there's no excuse for not having picked a name before the season started.
There are a lot of valid excuses for not having an entire brand on the fly and ready for a complete roll-out for a billion dollar organization in a matter of months.
But, even if one were to make believe in their head properly contracting, vetting, designing, and having material and marketing rollout for an entire brand is as simple as “durrr I can make an X poll and design this logo in photoshop in the matter of days, why can’t a huge organization do it!!!” - here’s the cynical reason this is absolutely, positively just a temporary identity.
$ and marketing exposure.
The UHC stuff is going to sell this year because you’ve got an entire brand new fan base energized to support the team. It could literally be a poop emoji with the words “Utah Hockey Club” below and they would sell it. It may seem boring and bland to those outside of that market - but that doesn’t matter. People saying “why not wait a year” are not thinking like excited fans.
Next summer - they get to make a huge media ordeal out of unveiling the “real identity”. It’s another dose of energizing marketing exposure. And guess what? Everybody who bought the UHC stuff is gonna be back in the store or online buying the “Yeti” or “Venom” or whatever gear. They’re gonna double dip. And years from now all this boring one-off UHC stuff is gonna be commemorative gear, as somebody above pointed out.
I expect very much the powder blue and black color palette and probably the lettering/font to stay though - you want to create visual cues and a homogenous look to the fanbase from an in-game and identity point of view. So when you start to mix in the “full” brand identity with this year’s “starter” identity, the feel is seamless. People hoping the full brand is going to have some radically different color combo are going to be disappointed. The full brand may not have been ready for roll out but the color and certain aesthetics were certainly incorporated.
I am hoping they sneak in a thin tertiary color into the finalized look though, like the orange/red in the Kraken identity. Maybe a pop of purple? Would help also help give it some tie back to the Jazz.