The Moose Jaw Warriors have announced that they are looking into changing the primary logo of their team. 

"This represents the next step in what has been an ongoing internal discussion for some time," the Warriors announced in a statement released this morning. 

"This something that the club has been talking about internally for a couple of years," said Warriors general manager Alan Millar. "This isn't a reaction to an outpouring of complaints or any types of pressure. It's not a knee-jerk reaction to what other sports teams have done. I think our hockey club, in consultation with our board certainly respect diversity and certainly respect inclusion. We want to make this part of this review."  

Millar said they want to engage community leaders in this review, and they came to the conclusion that its time and "it's the right thing to do." He said the plan right now is to keep the name, colours and uniforms. 

"It's an inclusive name that fits all types of people. The football player, the young kid in the playground, there are all types of warriors on and off the ice, (and) on and off the sports field. There are warriors on our front lines during these challenging times during the pandemic. We like our name. We like the red, black, grey and white. Right now, our focus on this review in this process... is to only look at our primary logo."

A lot of people will be looking into this, and Millar said they're happy to engage with all stakeholders who have an opinion and would like to have a say.  

"We're a community-owned team," Millar said. "We certainly respect our fans, and we respect our partners. We've got a rabid fan base that we cherish and respect and at the same time when we look at this, we've subtly started to speak to our stakeholders and speak to our community leaders."

That includes Mayor Fraser Tolmie, City Manager Jim Puffalt, as well as Tourism Moose Jaw and the Chamber of Commerce. 

"We've also reached out to our local Indigenous groups," Millar said. "We want to engage, we want to have those conversations, we want to take in the information and do a thorough review and ultimately make the right decision and do the right thing."

The Warriors have in the past decades moved from the old Winnipeg Warriors logo into the currently-used modified headdress as the main logo. For secondary logos, they've also had moose-related logos and one with the hockey stick splitting the MJ letters. 

"We're very pleased with the response our fans have had to the moose logo," said Millar. "Obviously the moose has always been significant in our region with the name of our city. The other thing is that we've not done a lot of branding that had the city name in our branding or in our logo. We call it the moose logo or the city name logo."

The Warriors got involved with the U18 AAA team and branded them with the moose logo. Millar said they like the moose logo as the second logo, but they don't see that as a potential primary logo. If there needs to be a change after this review, they want to do in-depth research.

With the old logo and Indigenous name coming from Winnipeg, Millar asked if this presents an opportunity for the club to do something that's more about the city and the province.

"But that will be all part of what we dive into and how we engage with our partners through this review process," Millar said.

As for a timeline, here's no rush, Millar said, and they want to do things right.  

"We think we've got a really good head start on this process with the groups that we engaged with and I would think that, don't hold me to the grind on it, but I think we would like to get into February and March at some point and have some further information no later than that timeline."

He said they'd like to be prepared for the 2021-22 season if there is a change to be made.