Ridleylash

It's like if the Yankees or Habs decided they needed to "modernize" their look and scrapped pretty much everything that fans love about their uniforms in the process. That :censored:ing black jersey is godawful. Pure BFBS.

Hell, I'd have taken a name like Warthogs or something. At least that has the connection to the 80's and early 90's WFT and the last truly prestigious period of the team's history before moving to FedEx and Snyder getting his mitts on it. "Washington Commanders" sounds like a friggin' made up team you'd see in like Tecmo Bowl or something because the devs couldn't get the NFL rights.

Guess it's not surprising Danny Boy managed to the pooch, but jesus christ. We're stuck with these abominations replacing what was a classic football jersey for the next half-decade.

Holy :censored:, it actually happened. Brady's retiring.

I'd argue that at least a change was probably inevitable for the Flames, given the state of the Canadian economy in the 90's; there's a reason pretty much all the Canadian teams except the two oldest ones and the infantile one who just established their brand either got new brands entirely in that decade or were going to get one before moving, and that's the good ol' fashioned dough flow. It's easier to get a bunch of money flowing in if you rebrand so you can get a bunch of new merch going, and black was already pretty trendy by the early 90's... Now, saying that, I think the big question there would be if we'd have even seen something as weird as the pedestal if that rebrand had come in, say, 1991 when experimentation was mostly limited to colors like with SJ, as opposed to being in the mid-90's during the height of the NHL's "throw literally everything at the wall and see what sticks" aesthetic phase that birthed such things as Wild Wing or the Pooh Bear; would we have instead seen something more subdued, like a simple modification of their original look to incorporate some black into it?

more wasting TO's from McVay lmfao, this is masterful work on his part

Rams wasting another TO for all of 5 yards jesus christ lmfao

McVay burning a timeout on a stupid challenge lmfaoooo

McVay making an...interesting playcall there. EDIT: lmfao and he challenged at the worst time, too

THEY DID IT!

Man, every time I see a concept like this it makes their actual Reverse Retro sting so much more. This is gorgeous; only change I think I'd make is putting the logo on the pants up on the shoulders, too.

I mean, the '05-06 Sabres would very likely have gone all the way had they not been absolutely decimated by injuries, so I don't think that the success of the team was the main reason it sold so well. It was that it was a new primary look, and new primary jerseys have pretty much always sold loads, regardless of how good or bad they are (and the Slug look was definitely on the latter end of that). That the logo only lasted six years as primary, and even less than that without the original logo backing it up, in spite of how successful the team was on the ice at the time, probably indicates more that people liked that they went back to blue and gold over liking much else about the new look. It's why looking at merch sales is not always a good idea for judging the success of a rebrand; people will always want the new look just because it's the new look. I mean, you can bet the Isles sold a load of Fisherman jerseys on them being the new look of the team, but those were also so reviled they had to move away from it only a few seasons later; hardly a successful rebranding.

Eh, too similar to their current look, and RR's are supposed to be pretty distinct from the normal look visually. Ottawa and the Isles were really the only teams that went for something super similar to their main look, and one of those is because they just rebranded that season and the other is because that team has notorious alternate-hater Lou Lamoriello at the helm. Besides, they've already been using Rockies imagery on their third; this would be a natural evolution of that. Especially since the Devils sure as hell aren't using the Rockies stuff for much of anything anyways.

Eh, well, I kinda disagree; I think having a red-and-green alternate in the rotation and fixing up the modern jerseys to match their iconic 90's look is the best way to go for the Devils. They can have heritage alts just for a bit of variety, but they're not a brand that needs extensive tinkering. And yeah, Avs doing Rockies homages > Avs doing Nords homages. They've already been doing it through their third for a while, anyways, and I actually like those jerseys.

Shouldn't the Coyotes be the ones doing Jets 1.0 throwbacks by this logic, though? Sometimes, you're better off going for market matching if you have a team there over being strict about "only THIS franchise can do throwbacks to these other franchises from different markets!". I really doubt there's high demand for Hockey Rockies merchandise in Newark, but there'd be plenty of it in Denver.

Oh good, they'll be throwing everything at the wall to rebuild ASAP, that always ends well /s

I do remember Popowich stating the org wanted to keep black and the black C in the brand for stuff like retail merch and alternates even with the move to the retros as the main look, so I could absolutely buy a red 2004 throwback happening if the Buffalo jersey is part of a wider trend of jerseys. Obviously, that's nothing concrete, though. And after all, they can't exactly do the 80's design anymore for throwbacks, can they?

Gotta appeal to the youths, make it a Fortnite match /s

According to Icethetics' sources as said on the latest podcast, yes. They'll be new designs for every team, and apparently some teams are "bending the definition" of the concept, whatever that means (perhaps more fauxbacks like we saw Vegas doing).

(pushes up glasses) Ackshually, "buffalo" is also a colloquial term for bison, so they do use buffalo imagery.

It's also less complex and therefore easier to reproduce, so from a branding perspective it is an improvement. Black fire does actually exist, though getting it naturally would be difficult; Besides, I would think using colors to effectively say your fire-based hockey team burns so hot they leave ashes and charcoal in their wake would be a good thing, wouldn't it?

OT time now.

This :censored:ing game is a shootout for the ages, holy :censored:!