New challenger approaching!

The Portland Winterhawks, a major-junior team in the Western Hockey League appears to be ready to throw their hat into the NHL ring, if a series of interesting domain name registrations can be trusted.

Via domain detective Clark Rasmussen of DetroitHockey.Net, the Winterhawks registered numerous new domain names earlier this month, and while many were ambiguous enough that they could apply to the WHL club itself there were at least five which would raise even Fred Armisen’s eyebrow:

pdxnhl.com

nhltopdx.com

nhl2portland.com

nhlinportland.com

nhltoportland.com

(PDX is the code used for the Portland International Airport)

From Rasmussen’s post, we see that the Portland area has had at least two groups who have expressed at least a mild amount of interest in future NHL ownership, one of which being Winterhawks owner Bill Gallacher, the other is Paul Allen from the Trailblazers who backed out of a bid for an expansion franchise in the late 1990s wave which eventually added four in Atlanta, Columbus, Minnesota, and Nashville.

Portland has been home to the Winterhawks since the Edmonton Oil Kings relocated to Portland in 1976, winning two Canadian Hockey League Memorial Cup Championships in their time in Oregon in 1983 and 1998; prior to the Winterhawks the city was entertained by the Portland Rosebuds in the 1910s who are still engraved on the Stanley Cup from their brief time holding the trophy in 1916, the Rosebuds would lose the Stanley Cup Final that year to the Montreal Canadiens. Following the Rosebuds there was the pro-league Portland Buckaroos in the PCHL from 1928-1941 and then as a separate franchise in the WHL (a different WHL) from 1960-1975 winning one of their three league championships in their expansion season of 1960-61.