Women’s pro hockey has lifted off in the city of Vancouver today, as the PWHL introduced the Vancouver Goldeneyes as the expansion team’s name and identity Thursday morning.

In a well-attended press conference hosted at the Coal Harbour Cactus Club, the announcement featured a video narrated by Canadian music artist Lights and appearances by several players from the team.

The Goldeneyes’ GM, Cara Gardner Morey, was relieved to finally have the name public.

“That’s the longest I’ve ever kept a secret in my life,” Morey said with a laugh. “There was times I thought about trying to forget what it was because I was scared it would slip out.”

In a league largely made up of brands with more abstract concepts like Victoire and Charge, the Goldeneyes stand out as the league’s only team named for an animal. While the name will certainly evoke memories for certain fans of a beloved James Bond video game for the Nintendo 64, the branding is meant to represent the common Goldeneye duck species native to the Northern Hemisphere.

At the centre of the logo is a Sunset Gold bird’s eye, with the tip of the eye pointing to the Pacific Northwest. The earthy bronze colour from the recently revealed jerseys returns in the form of wings in motion,while the Pacific Blue and Coastal Cream also make reappearances in the circle surrounding it.

For Morey, the team and the bird they’re taking their name from will have a lot in common.

“These birds really can have clear vision. They soar really high, they can dive really deep, so for me they’re very resilient,” Morey said. “But they’re also very territorial and they do everything in unity, very synchronized.”

“That’s what you’re going to see on the ice, like everybody on the same page, and they’re also really fast and fierce. So I think there’s a lot that’s going to resonate.”

The players, each wearing the first batch of Goldeneyes-branded shirts, were excited to have a real name to build a team identity from.

“I thought the unveiling of the jerseys was top for me, but this one definitely one ups that,” Goldeneyes defender Ashton Bell said. “Now that our city and our fans and our group can kind of start rallying around and creating an identity I think is pretty special.”

“We’re just excited to get going and to now have this to build on.”

“It’s so cool and so unique, I think being an animal is so symbolic of being from Vancouver and having a team here,” defender and North Vancouver native Nina Jobst-Smith said. “I think it’s so special for us to have a sense of identity now, and have something that can resonate with our fans and our community.”

The team’s uniforms, unveiled in October, will still bear ‘VANCOUVER’ diagonally across the chest this season. Due to the timeline required for companies like Bauer, the league’s jersey manufacturer, a full year is needed to get complex rebrands in place. Their full-time uniforms featuring their new logo are arriving for 2026-27.

The Goldeneyes weren’t the only ones unveiling a name today. Earlier in the morning their expansion cousins in Seattle revealed their name, the Torrent, along with a wavy ‘S’ logo.

Vancouver’s team finally has a name and a logo to go with their jerseys and players. All that’s left is to drop the puck, with Goldeneyes training camp opening Monday before the season kicks off against the Torrent at the Pacific Coliseum on Friday, November 21.