The franchise bearing the name of the Wheeling Nailers came to Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1992. The history of this ice hockey team started in 1981 in Winston-Salem and they used to have the name “Thunderbirds”. In 1996 they had to change it to “Nailers” because of the trademark dispute with the franchise from Seattle that had the same name.
The new name was inspired by the city’s nail manufacturing heritage. All the team’s logos from this era feature cut nails in the form they were manufactured in the 1800s. Another invariable element is a mask. It is usually referred to as a hockey mask, but actually it is the mask workers would wear while cutting nails. The mask is in two colors ‒ red and black, then gold and black.
Behind it there are two crossed nails. The 1996 and 2003 logos have a wordmark with the team’s name.
The redesign of 2003 was only about one color change on the logo. The bright yellow details of the Wheeling Nailers badge were replaced by beige-gold, or sand, tone, which made the whole composition look more elegant and calm: the new palette also made the insignia look more professional and powerful, bringing a sense of a serious approach with it.
The redesign of 2005 simplified the existing logo, leaving only the graphical part and removing both lines of the wordmark from it. The mask and two crossed nails on the background were enlarged and got their contours cleaned, while the style and color palette of the logo remained completely the same as on the version of 2003.
In 2012 the Nailers dropped the red color to match the color scheme used by their parent club.
The 2015 logo is the same mask with cut nails behind it placed against the background of a circle. The outer circle is black with the words “Wheeling” on the top and “Nailers” at the bottom in white. The inner circle is white. The whole thing looks as if it has been “nailed”.