North Charleston, South Carolina, is the place where the South Carolina Stingrays have been playing their home games since 1993. The name for the team “Stingrays” was chosen as a tribute to the fauna of the area as stingrays are common inhabitants of South Carolina’s coastal waters.
The professional minor league hockey club South Carolina Stingrays was founded in 1993 and since then has been playing in the South Division of the ECHL (East Coast Hockey League), which is just one tier below the American Hockey League.
Beating the first professional hockey club in South Carolina, the Stingrays have done their best in representing its state in the league: throughout the years they have once won the ECHL regular season title, and have made the playoffs in all but two seasons, which is quite impressive.
Moreover, the Stingrays have won the Kelly Cup (a trophy awarded to the winner of the East Coast Hockey League playoff championship, named after one of the ECHL’s founding fathers, Patrick Kelly) three times, putting them at the top of the league’s achievements. The team is also known as a strong players-forge for more reputable teams: over the years the Stingrays have had more than 30 of their players move on to the NHL.
As for the club’s visual identity, there were several attempts to find the right graphical image. The logo has evolved from a realistic, then cartoonish representation of a stingray to a modern stylized version.
The first logo features a white blue-tailed stingray holding a hockey stick. The map of South Carolina in red is in the background indicating the Stingrays’ location. For an even greater identity there is the wordmark “South Carolina” below.
The cartoon-like wicked stingray biting through a hockey stick replaced the previous logo in 1999. All the club’s official colors are represented in this version ‒ red, navy blue, silver/ grey and white.
The current mark seems to be the best version of the three. The stingray in red, blue and white is placed on a red and white shield outlined in blue and grey. “South Carolina” is in white simple font, while the stylized “STINGTRAYS” appears in grey and white and is also outlined in blue and grey.