DULUTH, GA – Wednesday afternoon, ECHL Gwinnett Gladiators General Manager and Vice President of Business Operations Joe Gelderman announced that the Gladiators will officially change their name to the Atlanta Gladiators effective immediately.
The change, first reported on by ProHockeyNews.com in late May, is being made in hopes of capitalizing on the Gladiators’ short 27 mile distance from Atlanta to create a regional fan base. It is the second name change in the ECHL’s South division, following the Greenville franchise’s name change to the Swamp Rabbits.
“We are very excited to announce that our name will transform to the Atlanta Gladiators with the 2015-2016 season,” Gelderman said in a team press release. “We already consider ourselves to be part of the Atlanta sports landscape. Given the absence of NHL hockey in the area, we want to make sure people understand that we are not just Gwinnett’s hockey team. We are the professional hockey team for all of the metro Atlanta community.”
The void Gelderman made reference to was created when the Atlanta Thrashers were sold and moved to Winnipeg in 2011. That left the ECHL Gladiators as the area’s lone pro hockey team. The Gladiators play their games at the Arena at Gwinnett Center in Duluth 27.4 miles northeast of Atlanta.
Even with no NHL competition, Gwinnett has struggled to draw fans from Atlanta and much of the metro region. The renaming is expected to help establish a new identity for the franchise.
“We hope that incorporating ‘Atlanta’ into our name will allow more fans to identify with us and will inspire people from all over the metro area to continue to support and embrace our organization,” Gelderman said. “This was not a decision we made lightly and in doing so we made sure to consult with a cross section of our fan base as well as some of our corporate partners. The feedback we received was overwhelmingly in support of making this adjustment.”
As part of the name change, the Gladiators will update their “primary” and “wordmark” logos to reflect the Atlanta designation. The rest of the Glaiators’ logos will remain the same as will the team colors. The squad will skate in their traditional white (home) and black (away) jerseys this season along with the third “G-Flame” alternate sweater introduced in January 2015. The “G-Flame” is an homage to Atlanta’s first NHL franchise, the Atlanta Flames, which relocated to Calgary in 1980.
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