Humboldt Broncos president Kevin Garinger says the spat between the Broncos and the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League over a trademark is taking energy away from where it’s needed.

The league has applied to trademark the phrase “Humboldt Strong” but the team - whose bus crashed April 6th, leaving 16 dead and 13 injured - says it should benefit those who have suffered the most.

Garinger previously told CBC News the team would “continue to fight for” the trademark.

The phrase popped up on social media soon after the horrific crash.

League president Bill Chow has previously said it's just a matter of ensuring that its brands are protected, and he's hopeful that any concerns raised by the Broncos can be cleared up.

In an interview with Bolt FM on Tuesday, Garinger said the “Humboldt Strong” slogan is important in maintaining a legacy for the members of the Broncos family who died or whose lives were changed forever.

“So in order to sustain that legacy we’ve really relied on that notion of who we are as Humboldt Strong and so there’s been some question around who should have that trademark - I don’t want to get much into that. I really think that we’re spending energy where we don’t need to.

“I mean, our energy really needs to be on supporting each other and looking out for each other through this. We'll get there. I think there's continued communications that will be ongoing and certainly not something that anybody wanted to have in the media or that sort of thing.

“But it’s certainly been a challenging thing, but one that we know we’ll work through, like we’ve worked through many things, and we’ll get to a place where we need to with this, and ultimately back focused to what we need to focus on, which is, as I said, supporting each other.”

Bolt FM was unable to immediately contact Chow for further comment.

The Broncos are inviting around 80 prospective players to a spring camp May 25-27 as they seek to rebuild the team.

Season tickets for the next season will go on sale shortly.

With Canadian Press files