Quote:
Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction
Yeah, it is common in soccer. A lot of the time though, the team will organically adopt a nickname. The Montreal Canadiens followed this path actually. They are officially "le Club de Hockey Canadien", or in English the "Canadian Hockey Club". Canadiens was just the short version adopted and later made official.
The HC that makes up their logo actually stands for "Hockey Club".
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For their first season (1910), the Habs were simply known as ‘Les Canadiens’. George Kennedy, the owner of a local gym called the Club Athlétique Canadien, sued for trademark infringement and ended up buying the team. When the gym burnt down, the hockey team changed its name to Club de Hockey Canadien, which it officially remains to this day.
So even in that case, the nickname is older than the official name.
The only NHL team without a nickname before now was the Toronto Hockey Club, which won the Stanley Cup in 1918. They poached the player contracts of a previous team, the Toronto Blueshirts, but didn't acquire rights to the name, so they just went with Toronto HC. After that they changed officially to Toronto Arenas, which is the name engraved on the Cup.