The Knighthawks are....back?

[Jer15]

So here's a weird one:

The Rochester Nighthawks, who joined the Major Indoor Lacrosse League (which became the NLL in 1997) in 1995, are moving to Halifax, Nova Scotia for the 2019-2020 season. The NLL then announced that Rochester would get an expansion team for the 2019-2020 season. So they lost their team then received a new team right away. The team will keep the same name BUT, the owner of the now Halifax Thunderbirds has the rights to the previous logo so the new franchise needed a new look while retaining the same name.

Complicated. I know.

 

Anyhow, said logos were revealed last night. Green, black and, white are the primary colours. The primary mark is a stylized R. The secondary looks very much like an Atlanta Hawks logo

 

[PJBenterprises]

The similarity to the Atlanta Hawks logo was definitely the first thing that struck me when I saw the "bird" logo. Green, black and white could be a good color combo, if done correctly, but this green appears to be a drab olive/moss/forest green, which doesn't seem to provide enough contrast with the black. I don't know, perhaps I'll reserve judgment until I see the uniforms.

[Echo]

44 minutes ago, mr.negative15 said:

So here's a weird one:

 

Even weirder, the Knighthawks 2.0 will be owned by Terry and Kim Pegula, who also own the original Knighthawks' biggest rival, the Buffalo Bandits.

 

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

This is the second time a Rochester lacrosse team has been involved in a weird relocation scheme.  In 2009, the NLL's Rochester Rattlers moved to Toronto and became the Toronto Nationals (now Hamilton Nationals). But, demonstrating the destructive history of the f-ing Cleveland f-ing Browns, the Rattlers' history was left behind in Rochester for an eventual new team.  That team came in 2011, when the hapless Chicago Machine moved to Rochester.  But this team assumed the history of the Rattlers, and abandoned its own history, thus becoming a preview of the Bobcats/Hornets fiasco.  (Postscript: in 2018, the second Rattlers team moved to Dallas, keeping the nickname.)

 

Regarding these new Knighthawks logos, I am more interested in the R logo, which is superb.  (And I guess we can just ignore the whole nagging question of "what is a knighthawk?" I see that the original poster instinctively spelt the name in the sensible fashion "nighthawk", as a nighthawk has the advantage of actually existing.)

[Jer15]

I sure did. My mistake.

Even better, I had the correct spelling in the title but not in the post. Not my finest moment, lol. Years of following the NLL and I still do that. 

 

Side note, that just makes me laugh: That Toronto Nationals team moved to Hamilton (as you noted), then was set to take 2014 off and return once Tim Horton's field was built. They never did.

All the players were transferred to an expansion team: the Florida Launch and Hamilton got to keep the Nationals name. I don't expect it will ever come back but I thought you'd like that one @Ferdinand Cesarano  

[Echo]

This isn't the first time in league history that a team left a market and was replaced with an expansion team bearing the same name and a new logo.  In the previous cases there was a gap of a few years between the original team leaving and the new one being awarded. 

 

The Boston Blazers existed from 1992 to 1997 when they folded.  Then in 2009 a new Boston Blazers team was established.  The new Blazers only lasted three seasons before they too folded.

 

 

 

 

The Philadelphia Wings were one of the founding members of the Eagle Pro Box Lacrosse League (the earliest predecessor of the NLL) in 1987.  They remained there until 2014, when they moved to Uncasville, Connecticut and became the New England Black Wolves.  In 2018 a new team began play, also calling themselves the Philadelphia Wings.  

 

 

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

46 minutes ago, mr.negative15 said:

I sure did. My mistake.

Even better, I had the correct spelling in the title but not in the post. Not my finest moment, lol. Years of following the NLL and I still do that. 

 

Side note, that just makes me laugh: That Toronto Nationals team moved to Hamilton (as you noted), then was set to take 2014 off and return once Tim Horton's field was built. They never did.

All the players were transferred to an expansion team: the Florida Launch and Hamilton got to keep the Nationals name. I don't expect it will ever come back but I thought you'd like that one @Ferdinand Cesarano  

 

Thanks for the correction.  I clearly don't follow the MLL closely enough if I didn't realise that the Hamilton Nationals had folded.  Looking it up, I am surprised to see that this took place back in 2013!  

[stumpygremlin]

5 hours ago, mr.negative15 said:

So here's a weird one:

The Rochester Nighthawks, who joined the Major Indoor Lacrosse League (which became the NLL in 1997) in 1995, are moving to Halifax, Nova Scotia for the 2019-2020 season. The NLL then announced that Rochester would get an expansion team for the 2019-2020 season. So they lost their team then received a new team right away. The team will keep the same name BUT, the owner of the now Halifax Thunderbirds has the rights to the previous logo so the new franchise needed a new look while retaining the same name.

Complicated. I know.

 

Anyhow, said logos were revealed last night. Green, black and, white are the primary colours. The primary mark is a stylized R. The secondary looks very much like an Atlanta Hawks logo

 

Don't know if it's an issue with the file, but the darker color is not a pure black. It is a very dark green, which I think is a neat idea: the two-tone green and white.

[nash61]

7 hours ago, mr.negative15 said:

So here's a weird one:

The Rochester Nighthawks, who joined the Major Indoor Lacrosse League (which became the NLL in 1997) in 1995, are moving to Halifax, Nova Scotia for the 2019-2020 season. The NLL then announced that Rochester would get an expansion team for the 2019-2020 season. So they lost their team then received a new team right away. The team will keep the same name BUT, the owner of the now Halifax Thunderbirds has the rights to the previous logo so the new franchise needed a new look while retaining the same name.

Complicated. I know.

 

Anyhow, said logos were revealed last night. Green, black and, white are the primary colours. The primary mark is a stylized R. The secondary looks very much like an Atlanta Hawks logo

 

 

WAS IT THAT HARD? (Excuse the quick and dirty recolouring job)

[Jer15]

It was not.

 

clearly. 

 

I like that that a lot better

[Dynasty]

I moved my eyes from the green-colored logos to the purple ones below and man, that shocked my eyes a little bit. If the purple was a tad bit darker or just not so bright...

[JayMac]

I am Philadelphia Wings STH and the organization did a nice job in incorporating the former Wings franchise in a lot of what they did. They even had a retro night and the players wore a uniform from the late 80s. I'm sure Rochester Knighthawks 2.0 will do the same.