spartacat_12

There's a difference between an expansion of the existing championship/playoff format and a gimmicky tournament that's basically bribing players to care about regular season games in November & December. Your analogy would make more sense if we were discussing the recently added play-in rounds of the playoffs, which have been much more well received than this tournament.

From what I've heard it seems like the players have been the ones pushing for the league to start this season. I think if it were solely up to the people running the league, they'd have delayed it a year to get all the logistics ironed out without rushing. Obviously the generic placeholder jerseys aren't great, but considering the team names that leaked it might be better for them to get back to the drawing board.

It seems like a combination of a few things. They lost around 2000 season ticket holders during the pandemic, which was due to people cutting spending, changing entertainment habits, and issues around vaccine mandates. They started their first season ticket campaign since initially moving from Atlanta this spring, but I don't think the veiled threat of "buy tickets or the team might move again" went over very well. The honeymoon period of the NHL being back in Manitoba is over, but their owner is still one of the richest people in Canada, and is committed to keeping the team there. I think we're still a long ways away from relocation being a realistic option.

I'm almost certain they won't be worn during the game. The Flyers wore them in warmups with their reverse retros last season, so I'm guessing Carolina will do the same thing.

I don't mind it. It mixes things up a bit from the traditional Blackhawks or Northwestern 3 stripe design.

Basketball games literally have fans sitting on the court. When a visiting player is shooting free throws you get multiple sections of fans trying to distract them. The Clippers are purposely designing their new arena to have no clubs/suites behind one of the nets to maximize the amount of fans that can create distractions. Hockey has fans sitting right up against the glass, frequently banging against it whenever the play is close. You also get people sitting directly beside the penalty boxes. Professional athletes don't even notice this stuff.

@andregunts questioning why everyone is so critical of uniforms on a logo & uniform forum.

If the Sharks had been allowed to carry over every goal from the previous games they still wouldn't have won last night.

The fact that they're using single layer captain's patches on the orange jerseys (which I don't think they've ever done) is proof that there'd be no legibility issues with white names on the back.

I wonder if we'll see any players publicly complain about these courts. Although Adam Silver might have a sniper ready for any players saying anything negative about this stupid tournament.

When the Capitals first entered the league they wore white pants with their red jerseys before eventually switching to blue.

I came across someone selling a book that was used by the Nets when they were pitching Carmelo Anthony to sign with them as a UFA. This was when they were prepping for their move to Brooklyn, but hadn't completed their rebrand. It includes an unused Brooklyn jersey in the old Nets colours photoshopped onto Carmelo.

They're just designating certain regular season games as "tournament games", so they count towards both their regular season records & tournament group standings. Only the two teams who make it to the finals will play an extra game. It remains to be seen whether or not the players will actually care, but there is a financial prize, and the league is likely pressuring the PA to make sure guys know that this is important to the league.

Well MLB did do the Players Weekend jerseys that had nicknames on the back, and the NBA did nickname jerseys 10 years ago as well. It would just be boring in hockey because 95% of the jerseys would just have a 'Y' or an 'ER' added to the end of the guy's name.

Between this comment, and the Oceans Eleven inspired 'Heist' ad that the league has been running, they really seem to be leaning on the finals in Vegas as a selling feature for this gimmicky tournament. What are they going to do once Nevada inevitably gets their own team and the novelty of the league being there isn't around?

Well like I said, there is precedent for a reduced punishment due to an ownership change.

Vegas allegedly were misled to believe that Dadonov hadn't submitted a no-trade list when they acquired him from Ottawa. They tried to flip him to the Ducks later that season, but found out that he actually did submit a list of teams, and Anaheim was on it, so the trade was not allowed to go through. There are rumours that they may have to forfeit a 1st round pick, but Elliotte Friedman believes that because ownership has changed since the violation occurred, it likely won't be that steep. He compared it to the situation with New Jersey & the Kovalchuk contract issue. New ownership was in place, so the league reduced the penalty.

I can't wait to see the reaction when we see the first team raise an "NBA Cup Champions" banner to the rafters. It'll be even better if it ends up being a non-playoff team.

The players are actually permitted to bet on other sports as long as they're doing it legally. In this case Pinto has allegedly been allowing a third party to place proxy bets using his account. This is considered fraud, is illegal in a lot of states, and brings other potential issues like money laundering into the mix. The league had to make an example out of someone to make sure no other players think of trying anything sketchy like this. Between the Pinto situation, Brannstrom's scary injury last night, and Chabot now missing 4-6 weeks with a broken hand, it's been a tough 24 hours in Sens land. It already feels like another lost season, but hopefully this means DJ Smith & Pierre Dorion are finally shown the door. They're the last remaining holdovers from the Melnyk era, and the team desperately needs to turn the page.

This looks like it should be a Mavericks jersey.

For Ottawa & Montreal I guess I can see it because they want to avoid issues with having a non-bilingual name. The Ottawa Alerts were a pro women's hockey team that played during the First World War, but I guess they were worried about the plural version not being French.

Well it appears that the team names have leaked, and they are all terrible. I'm really hoping this league can be a success, and I know team names might not mean all that much in the grand scheme of things, but this isn't going to generate any sort of positive interest. Also, the Montreal Canadiens have frequently used a torch to represent their franchise, so it seems like a poor choice for a team in Toronto.

Aside from the warning flag pattern, they didn't really carry much over from the red/white uniforms. The sleeve striping is completely different, and they used way more grey. A black jersey with the original striping, main logo on the chest, and white numbers instead of red would stand out on its own. I've always thought a grey version of the originals would look good, but I can understand them not wanting to do another grey Reverse Retro.

Meh, you can at least still tell which teams are playing. The base colours still match the team, and they have the actual team name or city on the front, not some obscure nickname. Exactly. Most fans will buy whatever is for sale in the team shop just because they like the team. Hopefully this year the two purple jerseys end up being the top sellers. The branding strategy the NBA has moved to is pretty frustrating. They no longer have interest in teams using a cohesive set of uniforms that represent the team well. They just want to make every team's set as diverse as possible, which means everyone loves at least one of their team's jerseys and hates at least one of them.

Plenty of people (including the team's owner) brought up relocation when the Sens were having their attendance issues. I was commenting on the "move 'em to Quebec City" crowd who seem to have convinced themselves that it would be a slam dunk success of a market, just like Winnipeg was when the Thrashers moved there. I'm not advocating for moving the Jets anywhere, but this situation is why the NHL is in no rush to put another team in a small Canadian market.