The original logo, created by the Phoenix-based graphic design firm Campbell Fisher Ditko, was unlike any NHL logo in its concept and its intricacies. It depicted a Kachina-style coyote standing upright with a hockey stick; the most striking feature was the mask drawn in Southwestern style to show off the team's new colors: forest green, brick red, sand, sienna and purple.
"It was an exciting design but it was certainly not a traditional hockey presentation," David Haney, who served as Creative Director for the NHL at the time, said in 2015, when the team first brought back the jersey for a well-received Throwback Night at Gila River Arena. "It was hockey as interpreted with a Southwest feeling and the result was most intriguing. All of those different elements within that interpretation of the coyote on the skates with the stick were just fascinating to look at. It was a very complex logo, which was a good thing because it was giving you the opportunity to see something new every time you looked at it. Perhaps that's why fans who fondly recall the logo gravitated to it. It was very engaging."