The Tucson Roadrunners have no plans for a full-scale rebrand of their own color scheme, logo or other visual identities to match the changes announced recently by the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes.
The Roadrunners do, however, plan for their own version of the beloved Kachina logo to be a significant enough part of their 2021-22 schedule — especially on their home ice. The club is planning the return of “Kachina Saturdays” at Tucson Arena, a promotional series that first debuted during the 2019-20 season.
And the Roadrunners will host military appreciation night Nov. 13 at Tucson Arena while wearing a grey and black camouflage jersey that features the Kachina logo front and center. Additional logos representing the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard will be featured on the jersey’s back, under the players’ numbers.
The Roadrunners will wear camouflage Kachina jerseys for military appreciation night, scheduled for Nov. 13.
On most other home dates, the Roadrunners will wear their red or white jerseys featuring their primary skating Roadrunner logo.
The Coyotes’ Kachina logo stood center stage for the NHL club’s first six years in the desert, and the club’s white Kachina jersey had remained a fan favorite — even though it hadn’t been in regular rotation for the past 18 seasons. The white Kachina jersey will be the Glendale-based NHL club’s primary road option. The black Kachina jersey, reintroduced as an alternate the past three seasons, now serves as the team’s primary home kit.
The Coyotes’ new official colors red, purple, black, sand, green and orange, but its recent brick red, sand and black palate — which the Roadrunners more or less matched upon their inception in 2016 as the NHL club’s primary minor-league affiliate — won’t disappear entirely.
The Coyotes’ red jersey featuring a large Coyote head on front will be worn on eight home dates at Glendale’s Gila River Arena this season. That jersey and that particular color scheme will be phased out completely in 2022-23. That Coyote head will still appear as a shoulder patch on Tucson’s primary (non-Kachina) home and road jerseys this season, too. The Coyotes’ Kachina logo will be a shoulder patch on the Roadrunners’ alternate Kachina jerseys as well.
Whether the Roadrunners find it necessary to rebrand to match their NHL counterpart remains to be seen.
Adrian Denny, the Roadrunners’ director of communications and broadcasting, said an overhaul would take a full year — and that’s assuming the Coyotes, who own and operate the Roadrunners, would want their top affiliate to do it. While in-arena signage, advertising and overall marketing and branding are elements of that, Denny said that from his experience, “the biggest thing is league approval on the jersey, then production on the jersey.
“Everything else goes pretty fast once you have a logo in place,” he added.
That’s not to say the Roadrunners are going down that road just yet — or at all.
Denny said Tucson will be creative in how it implements its own Kachina logo moving forward, throwing a nod to the cultural and community elements cited in the Coyotes’ recent change. Coyotes president Xavier Gutierrez told ESPN that the Kachina logo doesn’t just throw back to what fans remember about the team’s inception, but also has a chance to add to the organization’s efforts at inclusion and multicultural engagement. The Coyotes have stated the latter as a major reason for going through the identity rebuild process.
“We not only want to focus on our fans, but also our fans in waiting. In our research, we found that the logo resonates with people who aren’t hardcore Coyotes fans or hardcore hockey fans,” Guttierez said. “That includes families and young females. It includes diverse communities, like Latina, African American and Asian communities.”
