Ottawa Senators unveil primary logo, to unveil uniforms Oct. 6

[WSU151]

10 minutes ago, spartacat_12 said:

If the NHL & MLB bring franchises back to Quebec you can bet we'll see the Nordiques & Expos logos return.

 

I'm not 100% sold on that, especially the Nordiques.

 

Winnipeg is a good example that a new team doesn't have to look like the old team. 

[Ridleylash]

On 7/14/2020 at 9:47 PM, spartacat_12 said:

They chose the name to honour the original Senators, so why shouldn't they try to look like them?

They can still do that with throwback alternates like they've been doing for a while, though. That's about all I feel is even necessary; I fail to see the reason this 90's expansion franchise should pivot completely from its own history and iconography to chase the shadow of a team that folded before World War 2. Sure, that team was quite successful, but that's still a fossil compared to the modern organization in terms of history.

 

You can honor that team with third jerseys and banners just fine, like they did with Finnigan's number and the original team's Cup banners. But dressing like that team full-time is not the direction I'd prefer for this franchise.

 

This team is not the Silver Seven, not historically; you can honor that club all you want in terms of third jerseys, but the franchises aren't the same and rebranding to try and look like they are feels almost disingenuous to me. Like it's purposefully ignoring the design history of the current club just to pretend that this team is an 100+ year old franchise with an intensely rich history.

 

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The current iteration of the Sens has had some moderate success, but not to the point that the centurion identity is untouchable.

I'd argue that the touching should be upgrading what the team has, not completely pivoting the entire brand around a completely different logo and aesthetic to everything they've used as a main identity. The Senators have all the pieces to a great core identity already, they don't need to pull a Vancouver and completely rewrite the entire branding of the team just because some people prefer the O jersey.

 

The O jerseys can be the alternates (assuming the NHL keeps the throwback slot idea for next season) and we can have a solid update to the modern team's original look as the primaries. There, now both of the major camps have representation and we don't have to completely alter the brand to do it.

 

As for sentimental reasons for rebranding? I'd imagine most Senators fans alive today would have far fonder memories of the Pizza Line and the excellent Sens teams of the late 90's to mid 2000's over Cups practically none of them were alive to even see beyond the banners in the arena and the notes on the Internet. Leaning into those memories, the more tangible stuff, would be far more effective than trying to make yourself look like a club from before the second World War if you want to connect to the pulse of the majority of your fanbase.

[The_Admiral]

Nordiques would definitely come back as they were, flawed '70s elephant-igloo and all. 

 

I understand the impulse to go back to 1920s stuff for the Senators, but they stumbled upon a pretty neat idea with the "stately" Roman theme, and at this point I think they should stick to it. I'd like to see a Peace Tower secondary, mint-green patina and all, on the shoulders, but black, red, and gold is a good color scheme for them, and the updated 2-D senator is really sharp, one of the best updates around.

[chakfu]

Both identities seem compatible enough to me, good use of an alt

[gosioux76]

10 hours ago, WSU151 said:

 

I'm not 100% sold on that, especially the Nordiques.

 

Winnipeg is a good example that a new team doesn't have to look like the old team. 

 

While this is true, the Jets logo didn't have the same nostalgia-inducing quirkiness of the Expos or Nordiques. Nobody was going to miss it. It was unremarkable.

 

I think in most cases, a team's logo holds equal value to its name. The Nordiques wouldn't really be the Nordiques without that charming, goofy logo. Same with the Expos. The Jets were the rare example where retaining the name, and just having a team in Winnipeg at all, mattered far more than the logo. 

[WSU151]

1 minute ago, gosioux76 said:

 

While this is true, the Jets logo didn't have the same nostalgia-inducing quirkiness of the Expos or Nordiques. Nobody was going to miss it. It was unremarkable.

 

I think in most cases, a team's logo holds equal value to its name. The Nordiques wouldn't really be the Nordiques without that charming, goofy logo. Same with the Expos. The Jets were the rare example where retaining the name, and just having a team in Winnipeg at all, mattered far more than the logo. 

 

I think a new Nordiques team could wear something like this (not my concept), add in slight red accents, and people would be just fine with it. 

 

[gosioux76]

4 hours ago, WSU151 said:

 

I think a new Nordiques team could wear something like this (not my concept), add in slight red accents, and people would be just fine with it. 

 

Couldn't disagree more. It would be silly to ignore a logo so distinctly associated with that brand and city. This concept, as nice as it is, has the feel of a uniform for a video game that couldn't get an NHL license. It screams, "look at that team that looks almost like the Nordiques." 

 

A sports fan anywhere, but especially in Quebec, can look at that Nordiques logo (or the Expos logo, for that matter), and know what it is without needing to read the words Quebec or Nordiques. In that sense, it's no different than Nike's swoosh or any automobile logo. 

 

Apologies for this thread getting Nord-jacked. 

[spartacat_12]

15 hours ago, WSU151 said:

I'm not 100% sold on that, especially the Nordiques.

 

Winnipeg is a good example that a new team doesn't have to look like the old team. 

 

With Winnipeg fans were attached to the name, but didn't seem as attached to the logo. It was just a wordmark with a hint of a plane, and their uniforms were a poor man's New York Rangers.

[WSU151]

1 minute ago, spartacat_12 said:

 

With Winnipeg fans were attached to the name, but didn't seem as attached to the logo. It was just a wordmark with a hint of a plane, and their uniforms were a poor man's New York Rangers.

 

But I think there was attachment to the blue/red/white, and the new Jets ended up going heavily with double blue instead. The Heritage jerseys appeal to the fans looking for the blue red and white, I think...could be wrong.

[Ridleylash]

2 hours ago, WSU151 said:

But I think there was attachment to the blue/red/white, and the new Jets ended up going heavily with double blue instead. The Heritage jerseys appeal to the fans looking for the blue red and white, I think...could be wrong.

The attachment was to the name "Jets", primarily. Most any good-looking color identity would've gone well as long as it was for the Winnipeg Jets and not the Manitoba Polar Bears or something like that.

 

With the Nordiques, the colors and the logo are what the fanbase wants, not just the team; so it's much, much harder to make an entirely new identity that keeps the old-school fans happy then it would be to take on the original colors and logo and just make some new uniforms.

[IceCap]

4 hours ago, spartacat_12 said:

 

With Winnipeg fans were attached to the name, but didn't seem as attached to the logo. It was just a wordmark with a hint of a plane, and their uniforms were a poor man's New York Rangers.

Yeah. The RCAF motif was probably inevitable either way, which helped when the new team showed up. It felt like something the original team would have ended up with anyway had they not moved. 

 

The Nords' logo, on the other hand, had the same charm as the Oilers' logo. A flawed 70s product that none the less was embraced. We know what they would have done had they stuck around- the purple and teal wolf thing that was peak 90s. A look around pro sports, however, shows you how that would have gone. 

They would have eventually recoloured the wolf identity in the classic sky blue, white, and red colours before reverting to the throwbacks full time. Maybe some dumb Edge set too. They would have eventually returned to the classic look anyway, so that's probably what any new team Quebec City team should embrace. 

[Ridleylash]

12 minutes ago, IceCap said:

We know what they would have done had they stuck around- the purple and teal wolf thing that was peak 90s. A look around pro sports, however, shows you how that would have gone. They would have eventually recoloured the wolf identity in the classic sky blue, white, and red colours before reverting to the throwbacks full time. Maybe some dumb Edge set too. They would have eventually returned to the classic look anyway, so that's probably what any new team Quebec City team should embrace. 

Either that or they go the Islanders route of slapping the old logo onto the dog logo's jerseys pretty soon afterwards, then go to an unnecessarily dark version of the classic colors for like a decade and then go back to the classic look.

 

Though it's navy and teal, not purple. That's a common misconception.

[SFGiants58]

56 minutes ago, Ridleylash said:

Either that or they go the Islanders route of slapping the old logo onto the dog logo's jerseys pretty soon afterwards, then go to an unnecessarily dark version of the classic colors for like a decade and then go back to the classic look.

 

Though it's navy and teal, not purple. That's a common misconception.

 

TruColor's estimate was a dark royal, but knowing the '90s, the intention was probably for navy. 

 

Had Seattle landed a '90s NHL expansion team, those Nordiques jerseys could have made good uniforms for the Seattle Wolves.

[The_Admiral]

Wonder if Pantone has a guesstimate of the second shade of blue they were originally going to use in '72. It looked like kind of a medium slate blue but they may have just been bad film stock.

[Nordiks_19]

Since no teams (beside Anaheim, Boston and Pittsburgh) use black as their main color, i think it's a good thing Ottawa goes back to black for their main jersey

[TheLAKnight]

1 hour ago, Nordiks_19 said:

Since no teams (beside Anaheim, Boston, Los Angeles, and Pittsburgh) use black as their main color, i think it's a good thing Ottawa goes back to black for their main jersey

 

Four teams wear a black primary, but none of them use red as a secondary color. Meanwhile, counting Ottawa, 5 have a red primary with black as a secondary color. So while going back to black just swaps these totals, Ottawa's new look will stand out much better among the black teams compared to how they are now. Looking forward to what direction they'll go with the alternate. 

[SHaMROCK]

On 7/13/2020 at 5:54 PM, WSU151 said:

The white accent stripes on the black jersey always looked better to me and represents more of when the team really became fun to watch in the late 90s

 

 

 

edit: It sounds like they will keep the double red arm stripes (without white accent stripes), which will still be okay with me. 

NO, no, no, no!!!  When they added white they ruined the symmetry between the home and away having EXACTLY the same stripes with only the main body being different!

[Bayne]

Yeah I don't like the large white stripes. It ruins the sleekness and sharpness for me. That 2D old school logo is great. I much prefer it to the modernised one. It's just classic.

[Ridleylash]

4 hours ago, Bayne said:

Yeah I don't like the large white stripes. It ruins the sleekness and sharpness for me.

At the same time, I do think the white adds that needed bit of brightness. The black and red alone is fine, but it's not all that brightly-colored, and that could end up being a little difficult for some to make out in a fast game, like the Lightning and Sharks' stealth jerseys.

 

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That 2D old school logo is great. I much prefer it to the modernised one. It's just classic.

I disagree; the lines on the original logo are really thin, and I don't think it holds up all that well as a modern logo for that reason. Shrink it down to a small size JPEG, and a lot of it's detail gets harder to see because of that. It doesn't scale as well at low resolutions compared to the updated version.

 

The vintage's face especially suffers from becoming mostly a big white blob with little definition at really small sizes, and the black outline around the entire logo becomes basically invisible. The modernized logo has a better defined face and helmet because of the thicker linework.

[SFGiants58]

7 hours ago, SHaMROCK said:

NO, no, no, no!!!  When they added white they ruined the symmetry between the home and away having EXACTLY the same stripes with only the main body being different!

 

Symmetry like that is undesirable. The white stripes are very necessary, to properly do the barberpole homage.

 

Unless they want to adopt the “Centurions” name, they gotta go full Silver Seven. Correcting a historical wrong by wearing the barberpole-style pattern (with center stripes, like the heritage set) is a must. Even if the Roman logo has to remain, they gotta do center stripes.

 

Of course, only one jersey did the Roman right:

 

Put the updated 2D logo on it and use block numbers (with a Peace Tower shoulder patch) and you’d be set with the Roman. 
 

Full Roman or Full Silver Seven are ideal. Mixing the two is a compromise that’s not satisfactory.