2016-17 NHL Uniform and Logo Changes

[Morgan33]

The =O= certainly represents Ottawa's hockey heritage and it's a fine shoulder patch.  I just don't think its interesting or visually appealing enough to serve as their primary logo.

On the other hand, when I think about how good the updated, 2D-centurion would look as an embroidered crest, it almost seems like a tragedy.  If they put it on a traditional template with nods to the barber-pole striping and the =O= on the shoulders, they would have something really special.  Something that celebrated Ottawa's entire hockey history with a perfect balance of traditional and unique aesthetics.  The centurion represents 25 years of Ottawa hockey and when you consider the 2D version can double as a perfect 'O,' it makes the connection to the roman senate a bonus, rather than the focal point.  Something to give them a more dynamic and interesting logo.

[C-Squared]

5 hours ago, McCarthy said:

 

Other than both teams playing in Denver and being named after things involving mountains (for the record so is every neighborhood, shopping center, street, etc in the city of Denver) I don't see any influence at all, much less an obvious one. 

 

In no world was the second identity influenced by the first. If anything I think the 1995 Avalanche were doing everything they could to be the anti-Rockies which also happened to include winning and being memorable. 

 

The uniform is a product of the 90s, not purposeful differentiation. As for the team identity, if the goal was anti-Rockies at all costs, they wouldn't have - when they could have created literally anything - chosen a snowy, triangular mountain as their logo.

 

5 hours ago, McCarthy said:

You're missing my point which is that the city's current franchise has no claim to a logo used by the city's former franchise no matter how appropriate it may be. How would an arbitrary oil derrick mesh with the Texans identity? It wouldn't, but the primary reason they shouldn't use it is because it's not theirs to use. 

 

Conversely, has a defunct, short-lived team cornered the rights to mountains, triangles, and the state flag C? While the Titans own the Oilers identity every chance they get, I will hold my breath on New Jersey Scouts & Rockies nights.

 

[bleuet]

Truth is the teams owners cannot act by themselves and let those so called image makers from ReeDidas or whatever decide for them and I'd say the vast majority of those designers probably never saw a hockey game once in their life.

 

The Edge move, the Leafs jerseys with no stripes on bottom, the horrible edge Oilers jerseys, one can say they've done everything they could to ruin this sport, fact is the players kept the sports growing, not the designers.

 

They live in a place where "ice" hockey as they say of 5th or 6th, now probably behind MLS, car racing tractor pulling, and those individuals pretend knowing how to give an identity to teams of the best hockey league of the world?

 

Coming animals themed logos heck tropical themes like "Panthers" gee listen, would "Blue Jackets" be cool for a ice hockey team? What about "Predators" Come on, get on earth.

 

Hockey is a very old sport, which deserves better then most of designs I saw from the NHL, which does everything to get the very last dollar you got in your pockets, third uniforms, Winter series uniforms, horrible jerseys.

 

Compare all you saw coming from MLB to the last 15 years of new things from the NHL, and that one look like a crap cheap circus full of chinese stuff.

 

Exception being Dallas Stars current setup, this league looks like its taking the fans for idiots.

 

Last time I bought a NHL jersey was 1982, and since then, probably got 10 or 15 NFL and MLB things in the closet...

 

 

[Gothamite]

1 hour ago, McCarthy said:

it's 2017 when branding is a different animal than it was in the late 50's/60's/70's and those were cap logos, defacto secondaries.

 

Not in the case of the Brewers, who took their primary logo from one old club and their cap logo from another.  Not to mention that in baseball cap logos are (and have historically been) as important as primaries, if not more so.  Few clubs had their primary logo on their uniforms until relatively recently. 

 

Or how about the Charlotte Hornets, who took their name and logo from another team that was still using it at the time?

[coltravesty]

I want to see 2-3 more teams with the Panthers and Oilers shoulder numbering. I hope it's Vegas, Colorado and Ottawa

[DTConcepts]

1 hour ago, bleuet said:

What about getting their identity strong before?

 

The majority of the anti-Rockies logo crowd is claiming that promoting it takes away the Avs' current "Strong" identity.

 

Also, the average hockey fan doesn't give a  about hockey heritage, unless the team from the past is memorable. No one in Colorado is complaining about how it's stealing from the Devils just as how no one in Vancouver cared about the team's Millionaires throwbacks.

 

Hell, no one on here really complained about those Vancouver alternates, and about how the two teams weren't connected.

 

You can bicker about heritage and history and such all day, but what it should really come down to is the design. Think it's poorly designed? That's fine. But that decision shouldn't come from what you think about it referencing the past.

 

I maintain my claim that the alternate jersey is miles better than the rest of the Avs' identity.

[oddball]

2 hours ago, habsfan1 said:

 

It would be a great fit in this league...

 

The name and the logo come across as a bad and I do mean a bad WWE tag team. You know, the ones who lose every week.

[Sport]

1 hour ago, C-Squared said:

 

The uniform is a product of the 90s, not purposeful differentiation. As for the team identity, if the goal was anti-Rockies at all costs, they wouldn't have - when they could have created literally anything - chosen a snowy, triangular mountain as their logo.

 

 

Conversely, has a defunct, short-lived team cornered the rights to mountains, triangles, and the state flag C? While the Titans own the Oilers identity every chance they get, I will hold my breath on New Jersey Scouts & Rockies nights.

 

 

Everything in Denver uses a snowy, triangular mountain logo. They chose Avalanche - when they could have created literally anything - because it was the 90's and radical xtreme singular sports names were all the rage and Colorado is known for mountains and Rockies was taken by the baseball team at that point. Also an A is the most mountainous shaped letter. That has nothing to do with the Rockies. 

 

Yes a defunct, short-lived team cornered the rights to a triangular mountain shape with the state flag C in the middle of it. That's exactly what I'm saying. The Devils literally just used the mountain logo as a patch for one of their team doctors. 

 

1 hour ago, Gothamite said:

 

Not in the case of the Brewers, who took their primary logo from one old club and their cap logo from another.  Not to mention that in baseball cap logos are (and have historically been) as important as primaries, if not more so.  Few clubs had their primary logo on their uniforms until relatively recently. 

My mistake then, but that was a fondly remembered team, a minor league franchise that wasn't directly competing with the major league Brewers. It was a promotion in a sense. Surely, those are obvious enough distinctions that I don't have to continue to explain why it's not analogous with the current Avs third jersey logo. 

 

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Or how about the Charlotte Hornets, who took their name and logo from another team that was still using it at the time?

 

The Hornets snafu wasn't ideal, but they made an agreement with the Pelicans. The Pelicans changed in 2013, the Bobcats changed in 2014. It's not like they played a season with two different Hornets franchises. Secondly, it was righting a wrong. It restored a team to a beloved identity whose replacement wasn't moving anybody. It's the exact opposite of the Avalanche situation where the current team was successful and the old team was the hockey version of the Bobcats - bad and forgettable. It's pure revisionism to pretend like the Rockies meant anything to anyone. They were never embraced on the level of the original Hornets. 

 

47 minutes ago, Zeus89725 said:

You can bicker about heritage and history and such all day, but what it should really come down to is the design. Think it's poorly designed? That's fine. But that decision shouldn't come from what you think about it referencing the past.

 

Nonsense. My decision comes first and foremost because I think it looks awful and the secondary stuff doesn't help. I also happen to think all of that stuff is critical to the success of a logo and design is the full combination of history, locality, context within the league, and creativity in addition to aesthetics and they can't be separated because logos and uniforms don't exist in a vacuum. In a vacuum though? The logo, from a purely aesthetic standpoint, sucks. (OKAY FOLKS CMON we're having a good time yelling online!)

 

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I maintain my claim that the alternate jersey is miles better than the rest of the Avs' identity.

 

the alternate jersey is better because the rest of the Avs identity includes the worst EDGE uniforms that they are inexplicably still wearing. It would be difficult to have a worse looking jersey than the ones they've been wearing since 07. Serious, designing a jersey worse than the Avs EDGE sweaters would be hard to do. 

 

If they change logos, though, they're throwing the baby (the current logo) out with the bathwater (the crappy crappy EDGE uniforms) in order to fill the tub with someone else's older, smellier bathwater (the triangle). 

[Chromatic]

I think the Avs logo is in sore need of an update. I'm not proposing an overhaul, just bringing it into the 21st century. I don't know why thats so controversial. Plenty of more storied teams update their logos consistently, keeping the whole intact while refining it to keep it looking good.

 

This is what I mean.

 

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Unskew the circle. Untilt the logo. Straighten and clean up the lines. Keep the essence intact. Bam. Great logo. While you're at it ditch the edge uniforms.

 

Also as an aside my personal preference would be for them to keep burgundy and steel blue as their primary colours, but change the black to navy.

[hawk36]

Boston and Vancouver have regressed.

[The_Admiral]

No, I think Boston's logo is much better with the serifs lining up with the spokes. The stick-in-rink can't be saved; there's nothing to save.

[habsfan1]

2 hours ago, oddball said:

The name and the logo come across as a bad and I do mean a bad WWE tag team. You know, the ones who lose every week.

 

I have a good idea of who that is.

[Morgan33]

4 hours ago, hawk36 said:

Boston and Vancouver have regressed.

 

Couldn't disagree more.  Boston has never had a better logo in their history.  Might even be the best in league.

The updated stick n' rink is also a massive improvement as you can now make a case for the "C" being present.  The thicker white area and updated stick do wonders for that previously lack-luster logo.

[ColeJ]

7 hours ago, bleuet said:

Exception being Dallas Stars current setup, this league looks like its taking the fans for idiots.

 

It may be counter-productive to "Southern hockey" to make note of this, but the man in charge of the Stars redesign from Day 1 was a Canadian businessman that plays beer league himself, and heavily weighed the opinions of the fans (myself, luckily, included) in his decision making.

 

He made a team that routinely thinks of itself as an outlier, young-market, non-traditional novelty begin to think of itself as a Second Six franchise, with a Stanley Cup pedigree, in a market with a rich history of minor-pro hockey (and NHL hockey for about as long as the North Stars played)... and made them dress appropriately.

 

Keep in mind, the Reebok re-design was everything the Gaglardi re-design was not. Bland colors. Awkward wordmarks. Front numbers. No waist stripes. Contradictory to franchise history. The only thing that saved this franchise, both aesthetically and on the ice, was the interference of a Canadian hockey fan that just happened to have a ton of money and mother from Dallas.

 

In summation, I agree with quite a bit of what you said, and I'm just grateful to be part of the exemption.

[bleuet]

Current Stars are just awesome, logo, jersey, fonts, excellent.

 

Its a matter of balance. They will put the very modern (and ugly) Hurricanes logo on a old school jersey theme and say its fine. Same goes for the Toronto Bay Lightning current unis.

 

Why you'll ask? To make people believe those teams have history? Carolina won the Stanley cup with their first look that was hundreds of thousands miles ahead better than their Team Canada look. What did they have in their minds? The previous jersey was G O R G E O U S, it had a IDENTITY and changed them for chineese counterfied lookings.

 

Sometime, change is not a good idea. If you want to do it, do it for the good reason not for $$$ motivation.

 

No I'm not a old school biaised person, to the very contrary, but I just dont see any coordination between most of what the NHL design team does.

 

But its the NHL, the cheapest looking pro league in America.

[Bayne]

I really think Ottawa are the one team that has such an untapped resource of potential for their identity. I don't really dislike their current logo, but it could be better (the 2d head is an upgrade already) and they could do so much more with their colour scheme and theme, etc. Its alarming how wasteful they seem to be with it all..

[The Giant Pacific Octopus]

Even though I hate the Sens, I do love their jersey. I think that centurion bust is beyond cool. I even bought some merchandise even though I don't like the team.

To me that is pretty cool. Even though the profile centurion is cool too, that 3d version is awesome.

 

Now watch the Sens drop that for an "O". A bland dull identity, just so they can try to look like a team that folded in the mid 1930s.

 

[bleuet]

1 hour ago, The Giant Pacific Octopus said:

Even though I hate the Sens, I do love their jersey. I think that centurion bust is beyond cool. I even bought some merchandise even though I don't like the team.

To me that is pretty cool. Even though the profile centurion is cool too, that 3d version is awesome.

 

Now watch the Sens drop that for an "O". A bland dull identity, just so they can try to look like a team that folded in the mid 1930s.

 

 

 

The O vs the roman guy

 

 

 

 

I think the O screams hockey, while beeing the one and only pro sports team I think using this as a logo. Players looks bold, unique, agressive even sort of phantomatic with the O, they look like anybody else with the 3D roman guy.

 

Its popular in Ottawa, its Stanley cup's reference, its unique, and heck, the Ottawa 67's junior team used the O for decades.

 

The roman guy for me a like, well, not the best. In fact, many of the senators at the house of commons sleeps in sessions.

 

Its Rome. I dunno, never light interest for me.

 

My 2 cents is theres a battle between the league offices and Ottawa to go to O.

 

[VikWings]

Seems like an unpopular opinion but in no way is the Rockies logo better than the current logo. And the stupid flag C isn't better than the yeti foot either. And the light blue goes so much better with the maroon than navy does.

 

The Avs just need to re-design the jersey and not touch the logo and colors.

 

But this is the same team that still has the horrible edge click and fill template almost 10 years later. We know when they do switch they'll just promote the navy thirds (or make a maroon version) with a white counterpart. They're going back to the logo of a defunct doormat team that lasted less than 10 years and is now the Devils.

[hawk36]

9 hours ago, Morgo said:

 

Couldn't disagree more.  Boston has never had a better logo in their history.  Might even be the best in league.

The updated stick n' rink is also a massive improvement as you can now make a case for the "C" being present.  The thicker white area and updated stick do wonders for that previously lack-luster logo.

Boston added lines that are unnecessary. Clutters. 

 

 

Vancouver's white inner line weight is superior but the hockey stick is now cartoony as opposed to iconic and the closing of the shape clutters. 

 

 

Both minor details but pretty substantial downgrades in my eyes.