Buffalo Sabres Alt/ 2020 Royal Blue Discussion

[Gothamite]

23 hours ago, Blindsay said:

Well man, there IS always room for that improvement. But if you go on the website, click on the logo, you’ll see that a good part of the rangers fandom wants it.

 

No comments section is ever a reliable indicator of “a good part of” any fan base. 

[Morgan33]

37 minutes ago, Ice_Cap said:

You really want a fight, don't you? Ok. 

 

I'm not necessarily picking a fight.  I'm just saying it's a little premature to call this the "90's are trendy" era when a team that won a championship in an actual 90's design is passing it over to imitate the Rangers via diagonal script.  Wouldn't the hurricanes be the perfect candidate to adopt their original look if 90's aesthetics were the dominant trend?

 

Quote

Look at the NBA. 90s throwbacks are all the rage. If the NHL isn't gearing to jump on that bandwagon now they will be soon.

 

Yeah, but we're not talking about the NBA.

[IceCap]

1 minute ago, Morgo said:

 

I'm not necessarily picking a fight.

This post is loaded with confrontational language. Seems clear to me that you were looking for a fight. 

 

3 minutes ago, Morgo said:

Wouldn't the hurricanes be the perfect candidate to adopt their original look if 90's aesthetics were the dominant trend?

Sure, but the differences between their red primaries when they won the Cup and their red primaries now aren't that distinct from each other. We know the difference, we're nerds who pay attention to this stuff.

For most casual fans? They'll see two red sweaters with a Hurricanes logo and warning flag stripes. I would wager that most fans, Hurricanes fans or otherwise, would say their home look is "more or less" the look they debuted in the late 90s.

 

6 minutes ago, Morgo said:

Yeah, but we're not talking about the NBA.

None of this stuff is self-contained. It all spreads around. It starts with a drip- the Avs, Coyotes, and Canucks, and goes from there. The NHL will be in a full 90s nostalgic cycle within a few years. 

[Morgan33]

2 hours ago, Ice_Cap said:

This post is loaded with confrontational language. Seems clear to me that you were looking for a fight. 

 

Quote

It starts with a drip- the Avs, Coyotes, and Canucks, and goes from there.

Okay, there was some confrontational language.  But it was because I was irked by the hypocrisy of your post attacking the Liberty jersey advocates.  When every non-traditional team and their mother was trying to play original-six dress-up it wasn't a trend but when a whopping two teams* look to the 90's for inspiration it suddenly is? 

*Canucks don't belong in this discussion, their special-event jersey is an 80's design that was re-coloured in 92.
 

Quote

Sure, but the differences between their red primaries when they won the Cup and their red primaries now aren't that distinct from each other. We know the difference, we're nerds who pay attention to this stuff.  For most casual fans? They'll see two red sweaters with a Hurricanes logo and warning flag stripes. I would wager that most fans, Hurricanes fans or otherwise, would say their home look is "more or less" the look they debuted in the late 90s.

And yet the three most 90's aspects of their cup winning reds were minimized.  Warning flags were sublimated, silver was all but eliminated and the number font was significantly toned down.
 

Quote

The NHL will be in a full 90s nostalgic cycle within a few years.

 

Perhaps but it isn't right now, not even close.  You don't see traditional teams going full 90's to hop on a bandwagon.  The opposite has certainly been true over the last decade with Tampa Bay and Carolina being flagrant examples.  Teams that ditched unique, cup-winning identities to follow what was trendy.

[IceCap]

7 minutes ago, Morgo said:

But it was because I was irked by the hypocrisy of your post attacking the Liberty jersey advocates.  When every non-traditional team and their mother was trying to play original-six dress-up it wasn't a trend...

You have very selective memory. I was pretty harsh on the Lightning and Hurricanes for "Original Six dress-up."

 

Anyway no. I wouldn't say I was hypocritical at all. I pointed out that the people who gush over the trends of 90s uniforms are now just as much a part of the nostalgia craze they criticized fans of traditional uniforms of being back in the early 2000s. 

 

[Fitzy0220]

On 8/16/2019 at 5:09 PM, Hat Boy said:

I am glad that some teams who ditched royal for navy are making their way back.  I just hope their don't pull "double reverse" like the Edmonton Oilers.

Agreed, as a Jersey Nerd, I was thrilled when the Oilers went back to Royal Blue, then they went and F'd it up and went with Navy.  I don't get it. Games are broadcast in HD, we sit at home and watch these HD games on our HDTVs, Royal Blue and Orange POPPED on my screen, Navy, not so much! 

[tommytimp]

The gold detailing looks like tiny Buffaslugs being smashed by the one true buffalo. 

[IceCap]

19 hours ago, Morgo said:

And yet the three most 90's aspects of their cup winning reds were minimized.  Warning flags were sublimated, silver was all but eliminated and the number font was significantly toned down.

You're not wrong about any of that. My point is that most non-uniform nerds won't see it like that. Most people don't pay as much attention to this stuff as we do. They just don't.

I would wager most hockey fans would assume what the Hurricanes are currently wearing at home is their Cup winning look, or close enough to it. 

[Morgan33]

18 hours ago, Ice_Cap said:

You have very selective memory. I was pretty harsh on the Lightning and Hurricanes for "Original Six dress-up."

 

You being hard on the Lightning and Hurricanes for O6 dressup wasn't the point.  I remember you clearly saying that shift to retro aesthetics wasn't a trend but a natural evolution.  I'm not saying that's necessarily wrong but two teams looking to the 90's for inspiration doesn't equate to a trend either.  If anything the shift towards retro is evolving to include the more out-there innovations of the 90's/early 2000's.

[IceCap]

18 minutes ago, Morgo said:

I remember you clearly saying that shift to retro aesthetics wasn't a trend but a natural evolution.

I think that, broadly speaking, each sport has its own aesthetic traditions. And every now and then you get trends that try to reinvent everything. Baseball had the pullover and colour revolution of the 70s and 80s, hockey and basketball both had the 90s with cartoonish logos, non-traditional colour schemes, and an emphasis on details, shades, and sublimation. Football's was subtler, but I would say the piping and panelling trend of the 2000s would count.

 

And in all cases things returned to the norm, the medium. So given that we're now twenty years out from the crazy stuff that we saw in the NHL? Yeah, I think a return to the traditional aesthetics of the game is natural. It happens in every sport anytime you have a massive trend that results in mass departure from the norm. The normal aesthetic traditions of the sport almost always re-assert themselves.

Baseball is perhaps the best example because of how widespread the pullover/elastic pants trend was, and how quickly everyone abandoned it for traditional button-down white at home/grey on the road identities once the fad burnt out. The 90s represented a less widespread equivalent for hockey, but so too were those excesses scaled back.

 

24 minutes ago, Morgo said:

  I'm not saying that's necessarily wrong but two teams looking to the 90's for inspiration doesn't equate to a trend either.

I think the time is about right for the 90s to have their time as part of the retro trend cycle. When the generation who grew up with those identities is starting to reach a point where their nostalgia and earning power is at a level where teams feel they can market to them. Why am I SO sure of this? Well it happened with the 80s generation, and the 70s generation, and the 60s generation. Nostalgia comes in waves, and soon we're going to be at the point where the 90s will centre stage. Again, it's already happening in the NBA. These things are not self-contained. They're part of a general pop culture shift that's always occurring.

 

My point, which you seem a bit offended by, is that the proponents of 90s identities are no longer the torchbearers of modern design preference. Again, we're as far away from the Lady Liberty Rangers sweater today as we were from a uniform from 1980 when I first began posting here in 2003. 90s stuff is officially retro.

[JayMac]

On 8/16/2019 at 11:18 PM, habsfan1 said:

 

The Ottawa Senators over 25 years ago

[andrewharrington]

On 8/20/2019 at 2:03 PM, Morgo said:

 

I'm not necessarily picking a fight.  I'm just saying it's a little premature to call this the "90's are trendy" era when a team that won a championship in an actual 90's design is passing it over to imitate the Rangers via diagonal script.  Wouldn't the hurricanes be the perfect candidate to adopt their original look if 90's aesthetics were the dominant trend?

 

 

Yeah, but we're not talking about the NBA.

 

It’s pretty easy to mold your observation specifically to support your argument, and looking exclusively at hockey is going to give you a false conclusion. If you back your frame of reference out to the NBA (Charlotte and Memphis just to name two), college football (Iowa’s new third), and especially the larger sportswear and sport-inspired streetwear industries as a whole, however, it’s very easy to refute your argument.

 

The 90s are very much a trend right now. I’d even argue that it’s been going for several years, and we’re probably on the back half of it already.

 

 

[Morgan33]

39 minutes ago, andrewharrington said:

 

It’s pretty easy to mold your observation specifically to support your argument, and looking exclusively at hockey is going to give you a false conclusion. If you back your frame of reference out to the NBA (Charlotte and Memphis just to name two), college football (Iowa’s new third), and especially the larger sportswear and sport-inspired streetwear industries as a whole, however, it’s very easy to refute your argument.

 

The 90s are very much a trend right now. I’d even argue that it’s been going for several years, and we’re probably on the back half of it already.

 

This thread is about hockey.  I don't care what the NBA is doing and haven't since they decided every team needs 50 different jerseys...  Fact remains that only one unaltered 90's throwback exists in the entire NHL right now.  Way too early to call it a trend.

I honestly wish it was a trend because going with the 90's throwbacks would vastly improve the main sets of the Ducks, Panthers, Hurricanes & Lightning and a significant chunk of the current alternate class.

[Gothamite]

25 minutes ago, Morgo said:

This thread is about hockey.  I don't care what the NBA is doing

 

The NHL does. 

 

Dont think for a second they aren’t looking at NBA sales numbers with an eye towards whether they should adopt a similar approach. 

[The_Admiral]

Why can't the NHL be more like the NBA? Why can't I be more like the NBA? Why can't a club sandwich be more like the NBA?

[SFGiants58]

Yeah, even MLB is getting in on some limited '90s nostalgia as well:

 

 

It's a trend, one that the NHL will probably follow soon (since they often like to be late to fashion styles).

 

Of course, the Avs updating their pre-Edge look and the Coyotes' throwback third are steps towards bringing in more '90s designs either as thirds or special throwbacks (like the Sharks did in 2016). 

 

Let's think about what teams could do a '90s-themed alternate, along with reasons why and why not they'd do it:

• Capitals: They just won a Cup in their modern set and management still loves that awful '70s design, so I doubt the Eagle/Capitol will return.
• Ducks: They've entertained throwbacks/a throwback mashup in the past, but I'm of the belief that the current ownership doesn't want to embrace Eggplant/Jade full-time. The classic logo in black/orange/gold is the best we're getting.
• Sabres: With the return of royal blue coming shortly, I doubt they embrace black/red/silver again.
• Hurricanes: What they're wearing is "close enough" in the eyes of ownership, which is both good and bad.
• Stars: Maybe a version of the initial Dallas uniforms or the All-Star design would be in the cards, but ownership seems satisfied with the current look/operating within it.
• Oilers: Their branding strategy, while it restored navy, seems to regard the copper & red as a "mistake."
• Panthers: It would be a good branding decision to either do a straight throwback or tribute to the original sweater design, but I'm not sure their owners (who branded away from the original identity) are inclined towards it.
• Kings: They seem content with purple/yellow throwbacks, as am I.
• Predators: The whole brand centers around the yellow-primary set and the slightly simplified logo, not the "Motorhead reject" logo and the navy/yellow/silver.
• Islanders: The Fisherman has an ironic appreciation, but I doubt we'll see ownership sacrifice a third sweater slot for it.
• Rangers: Lady Liberty could plausibly return, but it'd be on a simplified template.
• Senators: Throwing back to the original sweaters would be a welcome change, but the franchise is such a mess that I doubt they capitalize on this potential.
• Penguins: While there are some of us who love Robo-Pen, most fans aren't all that thrilled about the prospect of it returning (AFAIK). The diagonal script or a gold version of one of the powder/navy jerseys would have a slightly better reception.
• Blues: They just won a Stanley Cup in royal/yellow/navy, so I doubt royal/yellow/red gets much attention.
• Sharks: The original teal sweater should return, as it did in 2016. While it might not have the "allure" of a black sweater, it's still a nostalgia-producing machine. The shark fin look has its fans and would likely be well-received, but I doubt there is as much interest in it.
• Lightning: The circa-2004 design should have been the new third, but ownership seems keen in remaining the Maple Wings (and getting swept in the first round). 
• Canucks: West Coast Express is a decently popular look, but I prefer the current branding strategy that uses the black/reddish orange/yellow identity as a throwback.

A lot of the reason why '90s nostalgia hasn't taken over is that teams that could do it are more inclined to either ignore the period or focus their brand elsewhere.

 

[RyanMcD29]

I kinda had an idea for Adidas and the NHL to do a 3-time a year throwback set kind of like how the NBA does it. Friend of mine and I swapped some ideas and this was my list just for example's sake of jerseys that can sell. Then teams can rotate every season or two with other throwbacks.

https://imgur.com/ERVzLZw

Feel like there's a lot of money that can be made by throwing some retro looks out on the ice

 

As for the Sabres, just echoing what a lot of others have said in hoping that they keep the detail on the Buffalo for the new set and just swap the colors to the classics. Given these are the Buffalo Sabres you have to hold your breath in the execution. But hey, they might do it for a change! Otherwise I'm still staunchly against this anniversary jersey trend, but it does look like a nice glimpse of what can come

[IceCap]

2 hours ago, the admiral said:

Why can't a club sandwich be more like the NBA?

Because Tim Hortons' club sandwiches remain awful despite the Raptors winning the NBA Championship. 

[Ridleylash]

2 hours ago, Ice_Cap said:

Because Tim Hortons' club sandwiches remain awful despite the Raptors winning the NBA Championship. 

Your mistake was going to Tim's for club sandwiches at all.

[Fitzy0220]

6 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

Yeah, even MLB is getting in on some limited '90s nostalgia as well:

 

 

It's a trend, one that the NHL will probably follow soon (since they often like to be late to fashion styles).

 

Of course, the Avs updating their pre-Edge look and the Coyotes' throwback third are steps towards bringing in more '90s designs either as thirds or special throwbacks (like the Sharks did in 2016). 

 

Let's think about what teams could do a '90s-themed alternate, along with reasons why and why not they'd do it:

• Capitals: They just won a Cup in their modern set and management still loves that awful '70s design, so I doubt the Eagle/Capitol will return.
• Ducks: They've entertained throwbacks/a throwback mashup in the past, but I'm of the belief that the current ownership doesn't want to embrace Eggplant/Jade full-time. The classic logo in black/orange/gold is the best we're getting.
• Sabres: With the return of royal blue coming shortly, I doubt they embrace black/red/silver again.
• Hurricanes: What they're wearing is "close enough" in the eyes of ownership, which is both good and bad.
• Stars: Maybe a version of the initial Dallas uniforms or the All-Star design would be in the cards, but ownership seems satisfied with the current look/operating within it.
• Oilers: Their branding strategy, while it restored navy, seems to regard the copper & red as a "mistake."
• Panthers: It would be a good branding decision to either do a straight throwback or tribute to the original sweater design, but I'm not sure their owners (who branded away from the original identity) are inclined towards it.
• Kings: They seem content with purple/yellow throwbacks, as am I.
• Predators: The whole brand centers around the yellow-primary set and the slightly simplified logo, not the "Motorhead reject" logo and the navy/yellow/silver.
• Islanders: The Fisherman has an ironic appreciation, but I doubt we'll see ownership sacrifice a third sweater slot for it.
• Rangers: Lady Liberty could plausibly return, but it'd be on a simplified template.
• Senators: Throwing back to the original sweaters would be a welcome change, but the franchise is such a mess that I doubt they capitalize on this potential.
• Penguins: While there are some of us who love Robo-Pen, most fans aren't all that thrilled about the prospect of it returning (AFAIK). The diagonal script or a gold version of one of the powder/navy jerseys would have a slightly better reception.
• Blues: They just won a Stanley Cup in royal/yellow/navy, so I doubt royal/yellow/red gets much attention.
• Sharks: The original teal sweater should return, as it did in 2016. While it might not have the "allure" of a black sweater, it's still a nostalgia-producing machine. The shark fin look has its fans and would likely be well-received, but I doubt there is as much interest in it.
• Lightning: The circa-2004 design should have been the new third, but ownership seems keen in remaining the Maple Wings (and getting swept in the first round). 
• Canucks: West Coast Express is a decently popular look, but I prefer the current branding strategy that uses the black/reddish orange/yellow identity as a throwback.

A lot of the reason why '90s nostalgia hasn't taken over is that teams that could do it are more inclined to either ignore the period or focus their brand elsewhere.

 

As long as Lemieux is the Owner, you'll never see the robo / pigeon / hummingbird / Corporate / MONEY GRAB garbage again. C'mon 5 Stanley Cups all with the Skating Penguin (coincidence? LOL) 

As long as Crosby is on the Team, you'll never see the blues again. Sid is one Superstitious mofo (talking OCD superstitious) and 2 Injuries wearing blue, ain't gonna happen ('11 Winter Classic (concussion) wearing that Frankenstein 60s / 70s mish mash blue and 2013 regular season game (broken jaw) wearing that same Frankenstein 60s / 70s mish mash blue