Sodboy13

The blue one is from their outdoor game last season, which I thought would be a fantastic basis for a new look at the time. Glad they went in that direction. The home and road appear to be on a new CCM template, which looks a lot like the old Reebok Edge template, and I'm not a fan. The crests on the primary jerseys, but especially on the black one, need thicker outlines. The logo gets lost at distance. Overall, though, far better than anything they've worn recently, and maybe ever. "Lake Erie Monsters" still makes more sense to me as a name, but I'll take this. As an odd aside, it almost looks like they're wearing Toledo Walleye colors now.

In looking at some pictures upthread, part of the problem for Pittsburgh is their players wearing extra-long black undershirts with their white jerseys. That gives the tops a faint gray appearance, and since we know those jerseys are white, our brains may process the pants as being the same dingy shade of white.

Everything leading up to this unveiling has had an aura of "Good God, do less" about it. They did not heed that call.

I'm partial to their night as the Old Fashioneds. How can you not love this swingin' maraschino? https://madison-mallards-257397.square.site/product/-pre-order-adult-t-shirt-ls-cream-the-old-fashioneds/1396?cs=true&cst=custom

Waukegan wants the Bears now. Should make a nice pairing with the Lake County Fielders in Zion. Is anyone that far north in Lake County even still a Bears fan after the past three decades?

You hit a bullseye here, and you've no doubt seen and understood that in the fifteen years since Obama got elected, the right-wing provocateurs have done a hell of a job in turning "Chicago" into "the N-word you can say out loud in any crowd, make sure the contempt drips off your lips when you pronounce it." I thought Darren Bailey might cross this line when he kept calling Chicago a "hellhole" from his rented condo in the Hancock building, because he's a very dumb man, but even he just tiptoed up to it . Hell of a letter there. And the CTA's decline over the last three years really bears that Lightfoot hallmark of "How can anybody something up this badly without it being intentional?" Dorval Carter needs to be forced out naked on a platform in February for a Brown Lune train that never arrives.

So not only do we get the Oregon-esque shoulder "oars," we also get a boat oar pants stripe, and a numeral font that tries to make a standard block font proprietary by randomly adding and removing serifs and diagonal cuts. Really reinforcing the stereotype that Canadian pop culture is 10-15 years behind American at all times, here. This set cannot get gone soon enough.

I thought Brian Woods left the USFL to spend more time with his family. Turns out he'd rather spend his time with other people's kids. This reads like someone wants to make a full league out of Bishop Sycamores, which I guess could be lucrative until enough people catch on. Or maybe Brian still has the right phone numbers to loosen the purse strings at Fox.

It's also worth remembering that the Bears did not move to Soldier Field until 1970, when pretty much all of the transit rail track currently in use was already built out. Up until then, they played at Wrigley, the 'L' was right there, no worries, and Soldier Field was a desolate 100,000-capacity bleacher cavern whose main draw at the time was the Prep Bowl. Curse the NFL-AFL merger and the subsequent demand on George Halas to put his team in a venue bigger than 35,000, and with lights.

There is a transit issue that is hard to rectify by virtue of most games being on Sundays, when public transit schedules are always going to be lightest, and most of the Bears' ticket buyers being in the suburbs. Plenty of them want to drive anyway, so they can pay the extra $50 surcharge on top of parking to tailgate in the designated area with their repainted school bus full of gas grills or whatever. As for those who would want to commute, most Metra lines only run hourly or every two hours on Sunday, and their downtown stations are mainly west of the Loop, whereas Soldier Field is well east of it. The Electric Line and the South Shore stop right by Soldier Field, but they serve the South Side, South Suburbs, and Northwest Indiana, aka where the money isn't. Moving to a different location won't solve any of this problem, it will merely change the distance from it. The Arlington Heights location does have a Metra stop right there. Running adequate service and coordinating bus shuttles with it on game days would almost certainly require the Bears paying for the increased service. The Bears paying for anything that does not directly make them money is a non-starter.

Had The Score on as I drove my car to the repair shop (the boys were listening to baseball as I drove yesterday.) I was subjected to five minutes of Mully and Haugh (wait it gets worse) hosting an "expert" on the business of stadiums who immediately started blaming "these corrupt politicians in Cook County and Illinois who can't get out of their own way" and described the Bears getting billions in free money as "this gift they were going to give to the northern suburbs." I detest driving downtown for work, but for a moment I was more than willing to gun it down to Two Prudential with a cast iron skillet in hand.

Capitol Fax is a state politics blog with some relatively connected commenters, and one pointed out how the Bears immediately stepped on a rake with this. What they should have done was publicly express interest in buying the land "under the right conditions," and working with the state and other necessary entities to do so. Instead, the six-billion-dollar mom-and-pop shop thought they could bigfoot everyone because they're the indispensable Bears, bought the land, and then held out their hands saying "One stadium village, please." Now they're getting clowned by the governor, the state legislature, even the local school districts. As for the county assessor, he's run two successful campaigns on "I'm not a corrupt jag who rolls over for rich property owners at the expense of poor ones like the last guy," so he went ahead and said the property the Bears paid $197 million for was worth, oh, about $197 million. Now the Bears are left to blubber about what the land is actually worth without having much of an explanation of why they'd overpay by $150 million for it, and at the same time trying to explain why they're the sort of smart and savvy business whose wise financial decisions are worth a couple billion in tax breaks and state money. So now they're going to try to charm Naperville's new failson mayor, who definitely does not have ten figures on hand to give, nor the juice to get it. Naperville's got plenty of square mileage, but it's all been turned into lawns and strip malls for the last two decades, so good luck finding land cheap enough to make up for having to sell Arlington at a significant loss. The time to do this all was 25 years ago when nearly no one was wise to the stadium scam and the linemen from the '85 Bears could still actually remember playing in the Super Bowl. Instead, the Bears went cheap, as they have since time immemorial, put themselves at the mercy of the Park District and a city that views the Soldier Field renovation as another massive Daley can-kicking that's still biting them in the collective ass. Other potential municipalities for the Bears to explore: - Rockford, which a local state rep has already thrown in on. Well, maybe not Rockford proper, too big, too pricey. The Bears can buy the Stellantis property in Belvidere. - DeKalb, where the Bears can add 40,000 in temporary bleachers to Huskie Stadium while positioning themselves as the secondary tenant in a new facility built for NIU's move up to the Big XII. - Peotone, just as soon as the airport opens.

Yes. GOD, YES.

I recommend reading this part over and over again until the "NO" in your head is so loud you can actually feel it exert a slight pressure on your brain. Kicked my workweek off right.

Yeah, I think that was for the first couple of games because the NHL-grade facilities weren't going to be ready until like November/December. So they had massive road trips, but to keep things juuuuuuuust on this side of the insanity of a two-month road trip to open the the season, they dropped in a handful of home games with the Ikea setup you see pictured. This was the plan all along from when they announced the move to Mullett, by the way. Which tells you a fair bit about the plan.

I said upthread that we would see a lot of cities line up with cockamamie proposals between now and the end of the Coyotes' Mullett days in 2026. The week isn't even out and we're already into head injury territory. Omaha or Des Moines would make more sense than Hartford. At least their venues are newer. (please note that neither Omaha nor Des Moines would make sense, good God)

Clayton Keller reportedly wants out, and Craig Morgan was talking this afternoon that a top Yotes prospect (Logan something?) probably being perfectly happy to park himself at U of Minnesota for another year than having to subject himself to the NHL's Mystery Box. This franchise is well past the point of looking to ice a successful team, anyway. Just name Sam Hinkie GM or something. This thread is hot now for obvious reasons, but I am going to remind everyone that the Coyotes have the option to play at the Mullett for three more seasons, the league dropped $20 million of actual money upfront for getting facilities up to NHL standards there, and if one city in Arizona can launch a cockamamie proposal to bring the team there two days after the votes failed, imagine how many more are going to come to the table between now and 2026.

Is Patrick paying? Is Jake from State Farm paying? No? Next.

The Québec City metro area has an estimated population of 840,000-850,000, putting it on par with metropolitan statistical areas like North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, and Columbia, SC. The Hartford MSA is a shade over 1.2 million, by the way. The Canadian Dollar is worth 74 American cents, which oddly, was also the going rate in May of 1995. The American TV partners probably would not be thrilled trading out Market 10 (even given the current l-o-l state of interest in the NHL there) for a foreign country and language, and those deals are worth a whole lot more real money than they used to be. Short of a bulletproof billionaire coming in for QC like one did for Winnipeg, it all seems like a really tough ask, no matter how much the city loves its hockey and misses its team.

P-K Peledeau's bringing back the Nordiques? Holy hell what year is it?

Sounds like a great junior hockey market. Good for them. They can keep getting cheap tickets to watch their beautiful unpaid Francophone boys for years to come. It's no one else's fault they built an NHL arena on spec.

"If I let this team move to Houston and they start selling out every night, the salary cap goes up and you've lost your dumping ground for all your worst contracts" ought to get enough owners back in line.

Fool me fourteen times, shame on me, ya know?

I'll bet you Logan Wade's Shane Doan jersey this team is still in Mullett Arena next season, and if not there, then somewhere else in the state in 2025.

Say hello to Mullett Arena, the new temporary-until-further-notice home of your Arizona Coyotes. They are not leaving the state until Gary Bettman is in the ground, and even then.