After weeks of anticipation and build-up (and one slight delay to the name and logo release) the Federal Prospects Hockey League finally unveiled its newest team Tuesday afternoon, the Motor City Rockers who will play out of Hockeyland Arena in Fraser, Michigan, just north of downtown Detroit.

The name is a combo of the two things the Detroit-area is known for, cars and rock and roll, and the team will feature a purple, black, silver, and white color scheme, becoming the first team in the Fed to use purple since the Broome County Barons, way back in the Fed’s inaugural 2010-11 season.

As we already knew, the team is being headed by Adam Stio, previously of the Battle Creek Rumble Bees and the Evansville Thunderbolts, while the team also introduced their first head coach, former minor league player and ECHL assistant coach, Khalil Thomas. Thomas has spent the last two seasons as an assistant with the Greenville Swamp Rabbits, and mentioned during his introduction that his brother Leo, formerly the head coach of the Macon Mayhem, would also be helping the team, two very good gets for the team.

In addition to the coaching announcment, the team also announced a trade with the Columbus River Dragons where they acquired Tim Santopaolo, as well as Ryan Alves, two experienced Fed players that give the team a good starting block.

Now that the “official” stuff is out of the way, let’s get what we all came here for: The team name and logo. Here’s a cleaner look at the logo:

As a staff at BLH, we’ve come to this consensus on the name, logo, and colors: It’s a very good logo, it’s clean, stands out, is creative with the guitar turning into a hockey stick, and fits well with the colors they chose for this team. It’s another good Fed logo that has nice details in it, is easy to recognize, while not being over the top or too complicated.

The colors are pretty good and work with the Rockers nickname. It’s also unique in that they’re just the second Fed team to rock (get it?) purple as a color, so it’s a nice change from the recent run on teams wearing red and black or orange and black. It also gives off a kind of early 2000s Los Angeles Kings vibe, who had a pretty nice look back in that era.

As for the name, well, that’s kind of where we as a staff at BLH feels it’s lacking. The Motor City part is a nice nod to the region, and an attempt to lure more fans in than calling them the Fraser Rockers, but something about it just feels off. The previous team in Fraser was the Motor City Mechanics, and that was an all-time great minor league hockey name, but something about Motor City Rockers just feels off. It doesn’t sound like a hockey team name, or a professional team name. It’s almost like a travel baseball team name or a roller derby team name. It’s not bad, but something about it just doesn’t quite sound right.

Overall, we’d probably give the logo and colors a solid B+ and B, but the name misses the mark for us and gets a C.

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The Motor City Rockers are here, and ready to take the ice this fall/winter whenever the FPHL season does start. And with a solid coaching staff as well as two solid players to build around, appear to off to a strong start.

For more information on team, including tickets, check out their website at www.rockershockey.com