Own 9 of 30 NHL team domain names — Hockey teams

NHL lags MLB, but teams still own a good number of direct match domain names.

In my book, there’s nothing more exciting and intense in sport than NHL playoff hockey. With the playoffs in full swing, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at which NHL team names domain names are owned by the teams (or the league).

Team names tend to be common words, which makes them more expensive to acquire and difficult for teams to claim trademark rights. Major League Baseball has spent a lot of money acquiring 28 of its teams names and the NHL is far behind that.

I count 9 NHL team names that appear to be owned by the teams or the league itself:

sabres.com
hurricanes.com
bluejackets.com
panthers.com
wild.com
canadiens.com
senators.com
mapleleafs.com
canucks.com

The other 21 names are mostly parked, but some are owned by other businesses such as Bass Pro Outdoors (Ducks.com) or other sports leagues (NBA owns Kings.com and MLB owns Rangers.com).

Below is a list of all 30 team names and who owns the domain name. If the domain has whois privacy and is parked, I just put “parked”.