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NHL Reverse Retro Redo -- Choosing a different jersey from each team's history (new jerseys for TBL, CBJ, ARI, plus minor revisions)


WLD42

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Entirely by coincidence, the only two gray jerseys that I did in the entire series end up getting posted back-to-back. It is what it is!

 

Carolina Hurricanes

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No pre-relocation throwbacks here, but the jersey color remains the same as the Canes' IRL Reverse Retro. Like I did with Anaheim, and like Tampa did with their actual RR, I designated the '06 Stanley Cup win as the Reverse Retro year, and gave them a gray version of that jersey. (Maybe Carolina and Tampa will have to battle it out for the use of the phrase "Storm Gray" after I gave them both gray Reverse Retros.)

 

Using the red jerseys that they were wearing whey they lifted the Cup, the original gray striping becomes black, and the original black striping becomes red, with the white striping remaining white. The warning flag stripe stays the way it is, because it would be a little ridiculous if that changed (the same logic behind not changing any of the kachina pattern colors for Arizona). A few other deviations from the color-replacement scheme are the numbers and letters (originally white with a black outline), for legibility's sake, and making the middle stripe of the socks (originally white) black, instead of leaving it white; I tried it, and it was a distractingly bad look. The pants colors also get reversed just for the heck of it (and the helmet matches the pants, following a last-minute change after @WSU151's feedback on Tampa Bay's gray helmet!).

 

With a gray jersey, the logo's gray outline changes to black; it's a small thing, but I also believe it's the first time that sort of change would ever have been done to the Hurricanes' logo (other than the no-white helmet logo that was also on the leaked Stadium Series jersey, and the grayed-out shoulder patch on the 3rd jerseys, but those are big changes rather than minor adjustments). I also updated the shoulder patch to be the current Double-Flag Hurricane Warning logo, instead of the old Single-Flag Tropical Storm Warning logo, because it felt like a realistic decision that the team would make, given how all-in they've gone with that new alternate logo.

 

 

A little teaser for the next team in line: I didn't go with the "obvious" choice of the Metropolitans...

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  • WLD42 changed the title to NHL Reverse Retro Redo -- Choosing a different jersey from each team's history (12/32, CAR added)
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Seattle Kraken

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Everyone knows about the 1917 Stanley Cup champion Seattle Metropolitans, but Seattle's longest-lived pro hockey club was the Totems, who went by that name from 1958-'75, but existed as a continuous franchise under a few other names dating back to 1944. In addition to having  had a few different names, the Totems also had their fair share of different jerseys and color schemes throughout the years. I opted for the white jersey worn from 1963-'66, because the three-color red-white-and-blue look was easier to adapt to the Kraken's colors than the plain green-and-white would have been, and the '63-'66 white jersey had more interesting striping than the '63-'66 blue jersey.

 

This Reverse Retro is totally devoid of white, just as the Kraken's primary home sweater is. From the original Totems jersey, the colors don't actually move around too much, just get updated to the Kraken's palette: The white base color becomes the Kraken's "medium" shade of blue ("Shadow Blue" in brand-speak), the red is adjusted minorly to become the Kraken's shade of red, and the blue becomes the Kraken's primary dark blue color (aka "Deep Sea Blue").

 

I was intrigued to see that the Totems used those upper-corner chest numbers in the '60s; large, centered front numbers, while uncommon, weren't unheard of (and they did also use those on the jerseys that came before these), but having front numbers in that location seemed to me to be very much a thing of the mid-to-late 2000s, so I guess the Totems were waaaay ahead of the trend with that. It also got me wondering where the heck the captain's patch would go, and I finally got my answer when I found this photo from the period; unconventional, to be sure! (FWIW, the photo source is slide 26 of this slideshow, but there was no real way for me to link directly to it other than to screenshot it and re-upload it myself.) Once you know what to look for, you can also spot the captain's patch in this team photo.

 

In the spoiler tag below you can see my first draft, which used the Kraken's Ice Blue instead of Shadow Blue. I'm still sharing it because I don't think it's bad, and the bright blue is certainly bold and attention-grabbing, and does admittedly provide better contrast with the Deep Sea Blue. I held onto it for quite a long time before deciding to try out the Shadow Blue, but ultimately I chose the version you see above because this one just seemed a little too bright for the Kraken, who are clearly going for a dark, deep, and mysterious angle with their branding, and I didn't think there were any truly significant legibility issues to not go with the Shadow Blue jersey, even if there is slightly less contrast.

Spoiler

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  • WLD42 changed the title to NHL Reverse Retro Redo -- Choosing a different jersey from each team's history (13/32, SEA added)
1 hour ago, WLD42 said:

Seattle Kraken

Y3Zy3xw.png

 

Everyone knows about the 1917 Stanley Cup champion Seattle Metropolitans, but Seattle's longest-lived pro hockey club was the Totems, who went by that name from 1958-'75, but existed as a continuous franchise under a few other names dating back to 1944. In addition to having  had a few different names, the Totems also had their fair share of different jerseys and color schemes throughout the years. I opted for the white jersey worn from 1963-'66, because the three-color red-white-and-blue look was easier to adapt to the Kraken's colors than the plain green-and-white would have been, and the '63-'66 white jersey had more interesting striping than the '63-'66 blue jersey.

 

This Reverse Retro is totally devoid of white, just as the Kraken's primary home sweater is. From the original Totems jersey, the colors don't actually move around too much, just get updated to the Kraken's palette: The white base color becomes the Kraken's "medium" shade of blue ("Shadow Blue" in brand-speak), the red is adjusted minorly to become the Kraken's shade of red, and the blue becomes the Kraken's primary dark blue color (aka "Deep Sea Blue").

 

I was intrigued to see that the Totems used those upper-corner chest numbers in the '60s; large, centered front numbers, while uncommon, weren't unheard of (and they did also use those on the jerseys that came before these), but having front numbers in that location seemed to me to be very much a thing of the mid-to-late 2000s, so I guess the Totems were waaaay ahead of the trend with that. It also got me wondering where the heck the captain's patch would go, and I finally got my answer when I found this photo from the period; unconventional, to be sure! (FWIW, the photo source is slide 26 of this slideshow, but there was no real way for me to link directly to it other than to screenshot it and re-upload it myself.) Once you know what to look for, you can also spot the captain's patch in this team photo.

 

In the spoiler tag below you can see my first draft, which used the Kraken's Ice Blue instead of Shadow Blue. I'm still sharing it because I don't think it's bad, and the bright blue is certainly bold and attention-grabbing, and does admittedly provide better contrast with the Deep Sea Blue. I held onto it for quite a long time before deciding to try out the Shadow Blue, but ultimately I chose the version you see above because this one just seemed a little too bright for the Kraken, who are clearly going for a dark, deep, and mysterious angle with their branding, and I didn't think there were any truly significant legibility issues to not go with the Shadow Blue jersey, even if there is slightly less contrast.

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With the way the Totems used an actual totem pole as the T in their Wordmark I wonder how this would look with Seattle instead of KRAKEN and using the S logo in the wordmark in a similar fashion. Greta job, it's nice to see something besides the Metropolitans

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19 hours ago, johne9109 said:

With the way the Totems used an actual totem pole as the T in their Wordmark I wonder how this would look with Seattle instead of KRAKEN and using the S logo in the wordmark in a similar fashion. Greta job, it's nice to see something besides the Metropolitans

 

Thanks for the kind words! Going in a slightly unexpected direction is definitely one of my big goals for this series. I did think about how the Totems used the logo in place of the letter T, and how that didn't really work with the word "Kraken." (Logo design isn't in my wheelhouse, so an original "K" kraken logo wasn't an option.) Obviously I ended up deciding that the use of the team nickname was the more important aspect, rather than the replacement of a letter with a logo, but I'm definitely game to try it with "Seattle" and the Kraken's S logo. I'll probably have to experiment with some different fonts for the rest of the letters, since the Kraken logo would stick out like a sore thumb next to (my close approximation of) the Totems' font. Hopefully the whole thing doesn't clash with the overall jersey design and striping, with how modern the logo is and how vintage the jersey is, but I won't knock it 'til I've tried it!

 

Chicago Blackhawks

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I have the Hawks revisiting a jersey they've thrown back to once before, the 2009 Winter Classic jersey that was promoted to 3rd jersey the next season, but my concept hews more closely to the original 1935-'37 design, in addition to of course reversing the colors. I kept the 2009 logo, because realistically that's the most vintage logo design the Blackhawks ever seem to want to throw back to, but I scrapped the lace-up collar in favor of a more accurate crewneck collar, ever since that collar style was introduced as an option with the 2016 Winter Classic. And of course I had to use the fantastic zig-zag socks (which I found this great photo of to make sure I had their design correct). I also moved the arm numbers from inside the stripe to the more modern upper-arm location; obviously, arm numbers weren't part of the historical jersey at all, but I just prefer the look of them this way as opposed to how the 2009 jersey did them.

 

Other than that, the three colors rotate: the black base becomes tan, the red border stripes become black, and the tan inner stripe becomes red. I did keep white in the logo, because the 1935-'37 jersey did in fact still use white in its logo. And I left the socks in their original tan design, since they'd match the now-tan jersey, while for the pants I simply reused the way they were colored in 2009, since that was a better-looking option than continuing the color-replacement scheme from the jersey, which would have made them red.

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  • WLD42 changed the title to NHL Reverse Retro Redo -- Choosing a different jersey from each team's history (14/32, CHI added)

Up next, another team with two concepts I couldn't decide between, though in this case it's just the same jersey design in two different color schemes.

 

San Jose Sharks

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The two newest expansion teams aren't the only ones who throw back to past franchises of their home city! I've got the Sharks reviving the look of NHL's previous Bay Area club, the Oakland/California (Golden) Seals. San Jose has a fair number of past jerseys to pull from, but they've already been bringing their inaugural jersey out of the closet for anniversaries, and of course their late '90s jersey is the basis of their real life Reverse Retro. The other remaining option could have been to make their black 2001-'07 alternate teal (or white, or gray), but I felt less inspired to do that than to do this.

 

This first version takes the Golden Seals' 1970-'74 green and gold uniform and puts it in the Sharks' signature teal and black, complete with the serifed NOB font and my best attempt at a Seals-ified "Sharks" logo. It's a pretty straightforward concept without too much commentary, to be honest. But updating the Golden Seals' jersey to the Sharks' current color palette is perhaps a bit drab, and, aside from the logo, it looks sort of like something that could be "just another" normal Sharks jersey rather than a Seals callback, so I also came up with an alternate version...

 

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...which takes that '70-'74 design and puts it into the Golden Seals' own other color scheme, the bright teal and yellow of 1974-'76. It borders on garish, but then again, the same could be said about the colors when the Golden Seals originally wore it. It's also barely even a Sharks RR at this point, as it combines two different eras of the Golden Seals, with the Sharks logo as the only real link to the present-day team, which is why I placed it second in this post. But it's definitely the fun sibling of the more serious first concept!

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  • WLD42 changed the title to NHL Reverse Retro Redo -- Choosing a different jersey from each team's history (15/32, SJS added)
On 6/25/2021 at 7:51 AM, WLD42 said:

Tampa Bay Lightning

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For my Tampa concept, I ended up going with the same jersey they used for their real Reverse Retro; the only other options were the 2007-'11 Edge jerseys (which are one of the weird template-y piping designs from that period, so not a good choice in my opinion), the blue and the black "BOLTS" third jerseys (also somewhat uninspiring designs to me, as well as being a bit too recent to be "retro"), and the infamous 1996-'99 sublimated storm jersey (which was my next best option, but I didn't want to go the Anaheim Wild Wing route for every team that had one of those '90s thirds). Ultimately, as I looked over my options, this was just the one I was most interested in doing.

 

Gray jerseys seem to be a mini-trend of the moment for alternate jerseys, so I jumped on that train and made the jersey gray, rather than the blue that they did for the IRL Reverse Retro. The other difference is that rather than designate the Cup-winning year of 2004 as the Reverse Retro year, I went with the team's inaugural season of 1992, because I opted to go back to that unique NOB and number font, which is a really neat look and something of a missed opportunity if you ask me. (So if you wanted, you could argue that I'm technically not reusing the same jersey as they went with in real life!)

 

As far as reversing/swapping colors, gray doesn't appear on the original jerseys' striping, just the logo and the letters/numbers; it also pops up in one stripe on the socks and of course as the lightning bolt's drop shadow on the pants. (And also the victory stripes!) So if we consider the white '92 jersey as our original, white and the gray from the font get swapped, and we also have white replace blue, blue replace black, and black disappear aside from its original location in the font and as the pants color. (Black also replaces the sock stripe that was originally gray, since otherwise it would've been reversed to white... next to another stripe that also got changed to white.) Pants are unchanged, and I went with a gray helmet because I'd consider this a "light" jersey as far as color matchups on the ice, so I followed the logic of white helmet with white jersey = gray helmet with gray jersey. (Though it's also a dark enough shade of gray that it could potentially be worn against opponents in dark or white jerseys without causing any issues.) With the logo using all of the team's colors, I decided not to try and move any of them around and leave the logo as-is, with the gray-backgrounded roundel on a gray-base jersey just being a quirk of this design.

How about the giving the 90s Storm 3rd the Stealth treatment? Basically, just making the blue and grey panels black, not a "true" RR but something along the lines of what the Rangers and Flames did

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i really like that Kraken jersey.  Maybe cleaning up the front by removing the number on the chest so the captain patches can go there would help, but I get what you're going for.  Amping up the use of red for it though is great and it really pops.

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4 hours ago, WLD42 said:

Up next, another team with two concepts I couldn't decide between, though in this case it's just the same jersey design in two different color schemes.

 

San Jose Sharks

CG013oJ.png

 

The two newest expansion teams aren't the only ones who throw back to past franchises of their home city! I've got the Sharks reviving the look of NHL's previous Bay Area club, the Oakland/California (Golden) Seals. San Jose has a fair number of past jerseys to pull from, but they've already been bringing their inaugural jersey out of the closet for anniversaries, and of course their late '90s jersey is the basis of their real life Reverse Retro. The other remaining option could have been to make their black 2001-'07 alternate teal (or white, or gray), but I felt less inspired to do that than to do this.

 

This first version takes the Golden Seals' 1970-'74 green and gold uniform and puts it in the Sharks' signature teal and black, complete with the serifed NOB font and my best attempt at a Seals-ified "Sharks" logo. It's a pretty straightforward concept without too much commentary, to be honest. But updating the Golden Seals' jersey to the Sharks' current color palette is perhaps a bit drab, and, aside from the logo, it looks sort of like something that could be "just another" normal Sharks jersey rather than a Seals callback, so I also came up with an alternate version...

 

RhTSe6z.png

 

...which takes that '70-'74 design and puts it into the Golden Seals' own other color scheme, the bright teal and yellow of 1974-'76. It borders on garish, but then again, the same could be said about the colors when the Golden Seals originally wore it. It's also barely even a Sharks RR at this point, as it combines two different eras of the Golden Seals, with the Sharks logo as the only real link to the present-day team, which is why I placed it second in this post. But it's definitely the fun sibling of the more serious first concept!

The Seals Colors Absolutely. It completely fits in the Reverse Retro column

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On 7/1/2021 at 1:57 PM, AFirestormToPurify said:

How about the giving the 90s Storm 3rd the Stealth treatment? Basically, just making the blue and grey panels black, not a "true" RR but something along the lines of what the Rangers and Flames did

I'll be honest, I'd partly stayed away from the Storm Jersey because I was just a little bit intimidated recreating it on the Adizero template in MS Paint (the waves and rain are easy enough to trace, but the lightning bolts on the arms could go either way, and I don't believe I've seen the number font in the old Paint User's Paradise thread that I still pull a lot of stuff from). But since I'd finished all the teams before starting this thread, I'll probably spend the time seeing if I can pull that jersey off, because it would definitely be fun! And reversing it to have a black sky and blue waves would honestly make more sense than the original, from a natural world perspective...

 

23 hours ago, B-mer said:

i really like that Kraken jersey.  Maybe cleaning up the front by removing the number on the chest so the captain patches can go there would help, but I get what you're going for.  Amping up the use of red for it though is great and it really pops.

Thanks! I'm not a huge fan of the front number either, but I figured I'd stick with historical accuracy to start with, and maybe adjust things to fit more modern sensibilities afterwards. And agreed about the red; the Kraken's actual jerseys with the tiny red accent works well, but honestly just their whole color scheme is a gift to work with, and looks good in all different combinations, and making the deep blue a secondary color instead of the primary color definitely allowed for the red to get promoted a bit.

 

Next up...

 

Colorado Avalanche

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The Avs still get a white Reverse Retro, but one of their own jerseys instead of the Nordiques. I've used their first-ever alternate jersey, the 2007 maroon diagonal text design (which is the superior of their diagonal text alts, in my opinion). Besides reversing white and maroon, I also eliminated black (shoulder patch logo excepted) and introduced silver, in keeping with the direction that the team's look has been gradually moving in recent years. So everything that used to be black is now blue, and everything that used to be blue is now silver. The pants go maroon to help balance out the large swaths of blue that are in the hem striping and socks, and the collar laces stay white instead of switching to maroon because I just felt like it looked better. (As I mentioned earlier with equipment, the color of collar laces is another part of the uniforms that I'm either reversing or not-reversing on a case-by-case basis throughout the series.)

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  • WLD42 changed the title to NHL Reverse Retro Redo -- Choosing a different jersey from each team's history (16/32, COL added)

Here are a pair of alternate Seattle versions, updated to be a more contemporary hybrid of the Totems' and Kraken's aesthetics, based on @johne9109 and @B-mer's suggestions. Both versions remove the front number and move the captain's patch back to its more conventional location, and replace the Totems' block font with the Kraken's actual font for the number and NOB (stick-tap to Icethetics for that).

 

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Version #1 swaps out "KRAKEN" for "SEATTLE" in order to make use of the team's S logo, mimicking the Totems' use of their T-shaped logo, per johne's suggestion. I thought my best bet might be to create a "T" and an "L" to match the Kraken's wordmark logo and spell out "EATTLE" with that font, but unfortunately I couldn't pull it off. I quickly realized that the wordmark letters don't have any horizontal bars, just vertical and slanted lines, and building a "T" and an "L" with that slant just looked awkward; I didn't even get a chance to try adding on the beveled effect, because just the shapes alone looked pretty bad. I ended up using the Kraken's NOB font (the "shorter and squatter" version from that earlier Icethetics image I linked to), but did keep the drop-shadow as homage to the Totems.

 

Since I really like the Kraken wordmark, though, I also created Version #2...

 

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...which returns to my original concept of having the team nickname instead of the city name, but instead of using the Totems' block letters, just straight up uses that Kraken wordmark in all its glory. I made the letters red, since B-mer and I agreed that that looked really sharp, which did require the introduction of a new shade of red to the palette in order to keep the beveled effect, and I gave them the Deep Sea Blue outline, but no drop-shadow, as the bevel + drop-shadow would have been too much going on visually. I may have erred a little on the large side as far as the size of the letters, but it certainly makes a statement!

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  • WLD42 changed the title to NHL Reverse Retro Redo -- Choosing a different jersey from each team's history (16/32, SEA updates)

St. Louis Blues

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I don't actually dislike the Blues' IRL Reverse Retro; it definitely understood the assignment, and it's fun and unexpected. That being said, seeing the Blues wear a jersey that's, well, not blue (or white) just doesn't sit right with me. (Spoiler alert: Same goes for the next team on the list, the Blue Jackets.) But despite the extensive number of jersey redesigns the team has undergone throughout its history, reversing a sweater but keeping it blue or white just isn't really possible; I could have reversed their two shades of blue, but that would have been underwhelming to say the least.

 

So instead, the Blues become the final team of this series to dig into their city's hockey history and revive a past club's jersey! What you see is a Blues-ified version of the St. Louis Eagles' white, red, and blue jersey. The team may be somewhat of a footnote in NHL history, having played only the 1934-'35 season as a last-ditch effort to keep the Ottawa Senators 1.0 franchise alive, but it does represent the league's first presence in the Gateway City, which is certainly noteworthy.

 

This Reverse Retro jersey obviously substitutes blue for the white base, yellow for the blue striping, and dark blue for the red logo and sock stripe. The logo retains the Eagles' arched text, but replaces the eagle with the blue note, and the text is recolored to match the dark blue-yellow-white color and outlining of the Blues logo. I made the number yellow with a white outline for legibility, since recoloring the original red number to be dark blue on a blue jersey would have been pretty ridiculous. And the pants match the design of the Eagles', with the single moderate-thickness stripe, but I went with dark blue and a yellow stripe for the sake of aesthetics. As with my Blackhawks, concept, I used the crewneck collar, which I'm making an effort to do for all of my Reverse Retros that are from around 1940 and earlier.

 

 

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  • WLD42 changed the title to NHL Reverse Retro Redo -- Choosing a different jersey from each team's history (17/32, STL added)

An unexpected choice. I like it. The only thing that I think would ever keep them from actually doing it is the fact that the Blues and Eagles franchises aren't tied to each other outside of location, but neither are the North Stars and the Wild so who knows. Greta work either way

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On 7/3/2021 at 2:52 PM, WLD42 said:

Here are a pair of alternate Seattle versions, updated to be a more contemporary hybrid of the Totems' and Kraken's aesthetics, based on @johne9109 and @B-mer's suggestions. Both versions remove the front number and move the captain's patch back to its more conventional location, and replace the Totems' block font with the Kraken's actual font for the number and NOB (stick-tap to Icethetics for that).

 

3G17JQ9.png

 

Version #1 swaps out "KRAKEN" for "SEATTLE" in order to make use of the team's S logo, mimicking the Totems' use of their T-shaped logo, per johne's suggestion. I thought my best bet might be to create a "T" and an "L" to match the Kraken's wordmark logo and spell out "EATTLE" with that font, but unfortunately I couldn't pull it off. I quickly realized that the wordmark letters don't have any horizontal bars, just vertical and slanted lines, and building a "T" and an "L" with that slant just looked awkward; I didn't even get a chance to try adding on the beveled effect, because just the shapes alone looked pretty bad. I ended up using the Kraken's NOB font (the "shorter and squatter" version from that earlier Icethetics image I linked to), but did keep the drop-shadow as homage to the Totems.

 

Since I really like the Kraken wordmark, though, I also created Version #2...

 

z55vmio.png

 

...which returns to my original concept of having the team nickname instead of the city name, but instead of using the Totems' block letters, just straight up uses that Kraken wordmark in all its glory. I made the letters red, since B-mer and I agreed that that looked really sharp, which did require the introduction of a new shade of red to the palette in order to keep the beveled effect, and I gave them the Deep Sea Blue outline, but no drop-shadow, as the bevel + drop-shadow would have been too much going on visually. I may have erred a little on the large side as far as the size of the letters, but it certainly makes a statement!

If they knocked this off I'd buy it.

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On 7/7/2021 at 9:32 AM, johne9109 said:

An unexpected choice. I like it. The only thing that I think would ever keep them from actually doing it is the fact that the Blues and Eagles franchises aren't tied to each other outside of location, but neither are the North Stars and the Wild so who knows. Greta work either way

 

Yeah, I definitely knew that this one would be more "unexpected" than "show-stopping," but I figured I'd go with it anyways! The jersey design itself is unfortunately bland (not terribly surprising for something from the 1930s), so the "centerpiece" in my mind is the melding of the Eagles' arched text with the Blues' logo.

 

And now from the Blues to the Blue Jackets!

 

Columbus Blue Jackets

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Same as with St. Louis, I've taken a team that literally has "Blue" in their name and un-redded their Reverse Retro. Columbus, though, has far fewer past jerseys to pick from, and I preferred to sort of "fix" their actual Reverse Retro rather than dig into the city's minor-league history. The only jerseys they've ever worn are this inaugural design, their current design, and their two third jerseys: the short-lived one with inexplicably black arms that at least introduced the current logo, and their current cannon alt. I find the 2003-'07 design to be rather uninspiring, and as fun as the cannon alt would be to use, it's not exactly "retro" since it's part of the current set! So I kept the template of their real-life Reverse Retro but changed the colors up differently.

 

So how can having the jersey blue be a reversal? Because the inaugural jerseys were slightly different between the dark jersey and the white jersey, so I've taken the white jersey's design (which is indeed the same one they used in real life), with its contrasting sleeves and bigger hem stripe, and reversed it into a blue jersey. So rather than going white to red, blue to white, and red to blue, I went white to blue, blue to red, and red to white. This keeps the CBJ with a primarily blue jersey, and rather than having white arms and hems and sending blue all the way to the bottom of the order, red is the secondary color and white is the tertiary. I did keep the blue-and-red-reversed pants that went with the IRL Revers Retro, because they look good (better with this jersey than their normal red pants, IMO), and otherwise I'd have been reversing them to be white pants, which isn't exactly the aesthetic I was going for.

 

But perhaps most importantly of all... STINGER IS BACK, BABY! (Which also means his lime green gets to make a cameo appearance in the manufacturer's name on the gloves, just as they did back in 2000.)

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  • WLD42 changed the title to NHL Reverse Retro Redo -- Choosing a different jersey from each team's history (18/32, CBJ added)

Pittsburgh Penguins

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The Pens have never been shy about digging through their closet of old jerseys for throwbacks, so I decided to double up on the nostalgia and go with the jersey that was both the team's second ever jersey (and first with a logo, after the inaugural season diagonal-text design) and the first Winter Classic jersey (and subsequent third jersey), and swap it into the club's current black and yellow scheme. I knew I wanted to do an era-mashup between the black-and-yellow and powder blue eras, but a number of the team's jerseys have actually already been done in both color schemes: When the team switched from powder blue to black and yellow, they simply kept the same jersey design and changed the colors, and there have of course been diagonal-text jerseys in both color schemes (albeit with different striping). The Vegas Gold Reebok Edge era was a non-starter for me, so this seemed like one of the options that was both best-looking and most likely to appeal to Pittsburgh fans if it were a real-life jersey.

 

The color-swapping is straightforward: Powder blue becomes yellow, dark blue becomes black, and white stays. The only deviation is the numbers and NOB, which would have been white with a black outline (as seen in the captain's patch, which seemed legible enough to keep that way), but it wasn't a good look on a yellow jersey. But they do follow the logic of the '68-'70 white jersey, with the number color matching the sleeve cuffs and the number outline matching the shoulder yoke.

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  • WLD42 changed the title to NHL Reverse Retro Redo -- Choosing a different jersey from each team's history (19/32, PIT added)
13 minutes ago, WLD42 said:

Pittsburgh Penguins

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The Pens have never been shy about digging through their closet of old jerseys for throwbacks, so I decided to double up on the nostalgia and go with the jersey that was both the team's second ever jersey (and first with a logo, after the inaugural season diagonal-text design) and the first Winter Classic jersey (and subsequent third jersey), and swap it into the club's current black and yellow scheme. I knew I wanted to do an era-mashup between the black-and-yellow and powder blue eras, but a number of the team's jerseys have actually already been done in both color schemes: When the team switched from powder blue to black and yellow, they simply kept the same jersey design and changed the colors, and there have of course been diagonal-text jerseys in both color schemes (albeit with different striping). The Vegas Gold Reebok Edge era was a non-starter for me, so this seemed like one of the options that was both best-looking and most likely to appeal to Pittsburgh fans if it were a real-life jersey.

 

The color-swapping is straightforward: Powder blue becomes yellow, dark blue becomes black, and white stays. The only deviation is the numbers and NOB, which would have been white with a black outline (as seen in the captain's patch, which seemed legible enough to keep that way), but it wasn't a good look on a yellow jersey. But they do follow the logic of the '68-'70 white jersey, with the number color matching the sleeve cuffs and the number outline matching the shoulder yoke.

You've essentially made a Bruins jersey http://www.nhluniforms.com/Bruins/Bruins16.html Pittsburgh has always done a good job of making their jersey stand different from Boston's, but taking a jersey with more traditional striping and a circle logo  and giving it the Pens current colors just makes it look like it is out of the Gahden and not the Igloo. Not to say Pittsburgh wouldn't do something like this, but Boston fans would definitely call foul (Pittsburgh fans might actually too; they hate being told they look like the Bruins.) Looks good

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On 7/3/2021 at 5:52 PM, WLD42 said:

Here are a pair of alternate Seattle versions, updated to be a more contemporary hybrid of the Totems' and Kraken's aesthetics, based on @johne9109 and @B-mer's suggestions. Both versions remove the front number and move the captain's patch back to its more conventional location, and replace the Totems' block font with the Kraken's actual font for the number and NOB (stick-tap to Icethetics for that).

 

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Version #1 swaps out "KRAKEN" for "SEATTLE" in order to make use of the team's S logo, mimicking the Totems' use of their T-shaped logo, per johne's suggestion. I thought my best bet might be to create a "T" and an "L" to match the Kraken's wordmark logo and spell out "EATTLE" with that font, but unfortunately I couldn't pull it off. I quickly realized that the wordmark letters don't have any horizontal bars, just vertical and slanted lines, and building a "T" and an "L" with that slant just looked awkward; I didn't even get a chance to try adding on the beveled effect, because just the shapes alone looked pretty bad. I ended up using the Kraken's NOB font (the "shorter and squatter" version from that earlier Icethetics image I linked to), but did keep the drop-shadow as homage to the Totems.

 

Since I really like the Kraken wordmark, though, I also created Version #2...

 

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...which returns to my original concept of having the team nickname instead of the city name, but instead of using the Totems' block letters, just straight up uses that Kraken wordmark in all its glory. I made the letters red, since B-mer and I agreed that that looked really sharp, which did require the introduction of a new shade of red to the palette in order to keep the beveled effect, and I gave them the Deep Sea Blue outline, but no drop-shadow, as the bevel + drop-shadow would have been too much going on visually. I may have erred a little on the large side as far as the size of the letters, but it certainly makes a statement!

This is the better of the two versions.

 

Looks great! 

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On 7/13/2021 at 8:55 AM, johne9109 said:

You've essentially made a Bruins jersey http://www.nhluniforms.com/Bruins/Bruins16.html Pittsburgh has always done a good job of making their jersey stand different from Boston's, but taking a jersey with more traditional striping and a circle logo  and giving it the Pens current colors just makes it look like it is out of the Gahden and not the Igloo. Not to say Pittsburgh wouldn't do something like this, but Boston fans would definitely call foul (Pittsburgh fans might actually too; they hate being told they look like the Bruins.) Looks good

 

That's fair enough; clearly, it wasn't something I'd considered, especially since I associate the Bruins with black jerseys, but you're right, the shoulder yoke is really the only main difference between the Pens concept and that Bruins jersey you linked. I really like the idea of mixing the powder blue and black-and-yellow eras, but I'll try revisiting Pittsburgh down the road.

 

Dallas Stars

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Doing something on the wilder side is definitely Dallas's brand at the moment, so I came up with something that I think still fits that bill! This is their first ever jersey (technically the 1995 revision that widened the stripes; the original only lasted one season and the revision is definitely an improvement), and I've brought back the original color palette of that era, but with gold, an accent color only found in the logo, taking center stage, and black, the primary color that it's replacing, completely eliminated. It's unlike anything the Stars have ever done, so hopefully that'd be right up the team's alley: They've always been either a black or a green team, and the gold accents have always been a minor element even in later jerseys that did feature it in the striping (Exhibit A and Exhibit B).

 

Once I had landed on the idea of a gold jersey, the color replacement was a simple black-->gold, green-->white, and white-->green. But if a gold jersey in Dallas wasn't weird enough, the logo needed recoloring too, something that (aside from making "DALLAS" white when it was on a green jersey) had never been done to this logo until the IRL Reverse Retro. So while the green stays as-is, the logo's gold elements become a double-take-inducing white. The shoulder patch logo also underwent a few changes to eliminate black, not that you can really make it out at this scale, but the black outlines and "D" become green and the green outline becomes gold, and the tiny black line between the green star and gold outline simply becomes white to disappear into the background. And true to the original, there's a little logo patch on the rear hem as well. The equipment goes green because that's the darkest remaining color with black gone, and I think that's generally the best-looking option (gold pants would have been bit too much, not to mention head-to-toe gold might get a cease-and-desist from Vegas, even if it's not sparkly).

 

As far as choosing the 1995 jersey, I was tempted to take a stab at redoing the star-template jersey they used for the real Reverse Retro, because it is indeed one of Dallas's best jerseys, but I quickly discovered that I think they did what they did basically out of necessity, due to the Adizero template, specifically the cut of the underarms. You'll notice that the striping gets cut off there, which really ties a designer's hands as far as having different colors above and below the striping like the original jersey did. So I have a bit more sympathy now for why the jersey is all white, but the white equipment is still an... interesting... choice (though as I said at the beginning, between this and the neon third jersey, Dallas is not afraid to get weird, and more power to them for that), and I will continue to stand by my opinion that the silver in the logo was a bad choice simply because it completely disappears into the white jersey.

 

While I'm generally not a fan of truncated striping (looking at you, Reebok Edge-era Oilers and Panthers), this pre-Edge design manages to pull it off, in my opinion, thanks to having the numbers fill the gap. And with the nostalgia factor of it being Dallas's first jersey design (and certainly a better choice than the generic Edge jerseys of the late '00s/early '10s), taking this fairly respectable jersey and doing something a little funky with it felt like a good option for the Stars.

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