More Reverse Retro Concepts: 11. St Louis Blues

[thesieve22]

Personally love the racing stripe set, you’re definitely right to include more red. 
All three are great though

[colinturner95]

18. Washington Capitals

 

 

Time for a little story. So my grandparents lived in the Tri Cities, WA for 30+ years and having moved from Philly after the Flyers won their Stanley Cups (the parades of which my grandpa watched from his office in downtown), they became season ticket holders of the Tri City Americans after they moved from New Westminster. Now during that time, a young goaltender came through Kennewick by the name Olaf Kolzig, who did well enough to get drafted to the Capitals and stuck around for quite a while. Well flash forward to when I'm about 7,8,9-ish and I'm up visiting my grandparents and Ollie is doing a bobblehead signing at the Costco and I got to meet and talk hockey for a little bit. Pretty cool experience. 

 

Now why is that relevant? Most of it isn't but it get's me onto what I did for the Caps. I associate Ollie with this uniform:

 

 

Which I think is way too similar to the Reverse Retro, plus I personally think it bastardized the blue version it was based off of that I feel was discarded far too quickly. Not to mention it came so quickly on the heels of the Reverse Retro 1.0 uniforms, which I think could go down as the best Reverse Retro uniform period. 

 

 

Going further back than the 90's, I went back to day 1, or pretty close to it and took the 90's colors with me. I've been down this road before but did the uniform on a black base, this time going for the steel blue look as the base with black and gold accents throughout, in the stripes and the stars throughout. 

 

C&C Welcome!

 

[colinturner95]

17. Nashville Predators

 

 

We're reaching the midpoint of this little series and the next two teams suffer from a similar issue. In the Predators case, I really do like the choice of uniform. It's amazing what happens when you pick a more appealing shade of gold for the 3D tiger. My gripe is with the fact that the Preds now have two very similar gold uniforms, which I think kind of defeats the purpose of the whole program. 

 

 

So instead of going gold, I flipped it around and made navy the base color and turned the navy elements gold. Pretty simple fix that solves my disdain for the double golds. 

 

C&C welcome!

[colinturner95]

16. Minnesota Wild

 

 

Minnesota could be unequivocally the winner of the  Reverse Retro program, depending on how you look at it. It's also brought into question whether they should dump their current colors in favor of the North Stars palette. Now, none of that really had a huge influence on why Minnesota came in at #16 for me.  A big thing for me so far in my rankings has been how repetitive the two Reverse Retros have been. In Minnesota's case, it really does feel like they're test driving for a return to the North Stars' colors, but the beautiful colors don't save the repetition from RR 1.0 

 

 

Now I'm sure this will make some people feel a type of way, since the black base probably would be too similar, or would dredge up the uniforms worn by the team leading up to their move to Dallas. But instead of going for a green uniform, I did go the BFBS (I think you could call it that in this case) route on the 1991 uniforms, which I realize does undermine my whole argument above. But anyways, it was a different take IMO, especially in the equipment, going all black, with the stars on the sides of the pants. 

 

C&C welcome!

[colinturner95]

15. Toronto Maple Leafs

 

I hope I gave the Leafs fans enough time to grieve before posting these. 

 

 

Toronto is another team that has a tough time with this program because in a lot of ways, they've worn two colors for almost 100 years (as the Leafs) but even longer as a franchise. And at face value, they have one of the better Reverse Retros in the second go around. But, and I can't remember who it was on here or where it was, but they pointed out the inaccuracies and it was more than a couple and that knocked their uniforms down a little for me. 

 

 

Going off of the team saying this uniform is from the 1961-1962 season:

• The uniform crest had no outline, and RR2.0 had an extra outline that wouldn't appear until a couple seasons later
• The collar was a tie down and the RR2.0 had the retro sweater collar instead. 
• The socks were the iconic Maple Leafs triple northwestern striped socks and instead we got the main uniform ones basically. 

And not necessarily an inconsistency since pants are a bulky thing to lug around, but a skinnier pants stripe on the sides. 

 

 

 

and since I was bored, two other options: 

• A St. Pats'd version of the same uniform from above. 
• the 1934-1937 white jersey flips its colors to a blue base with white details. 

C&C welcome!

[sky1324]

You're doing great work here! I honestly think you've hit the area where the concept is so good that there's nothing to say. I really love that Capitals one, looking forward too the rest of the series!

[johne9109]

I think the only reason the Leafs haven't done a green uni like that is there will be idots that say "HaHa It LoOkS lIkE a PoT lEaF" the blue uni looks great

[Silence of the Rams]

17 hours ago, colinturner95 said:

15. Toronto Maple Leafs

 

I hope I gave the Leafs fans enough time to grieve before posting these. 

 

 

Toronto is another team that has a tough time with this program because in a lot of ways, they've worn two colors for almost 100 years (as the Leafs) but even longer as a franchise. And at face value, they have one of the better Reverse Retros in the second go around. But, and I can't remember who it was on here or where it was, but they pointed out the inaccuracies and it was more than a couple and that knocked their uniforms down a little for me. 

 

 

Going off of the team saying this uniform is from the 1961-1962 season:

• The uniform crest had no outline, and RR2.0 had an extra outline that wouldn't appear until a couple seasons later
• The collar was a tie down and the RR2.0 had the retro sweater collar instead. 
• The socks were the iconic Maple Leafs triple northwestern striped socks and instead we got the main uniform ones basically. 

And not necessarily an inconsistency since pants are a bulky thing to lug around, but a skinnier pants stripe on the sides. 

 

 

 

and since I was bored, two other options: 

• A St. Pats'd version of the same uniform from above. 
• the 1934-1937 white jersey flips its colors to a blue base with white details. 

C&C welcome!

I wonder if they used the top jersey they'd get past the second round

[colinturner95]

14. Buffalo Sabres

 

 

All I had to write on notes for these: "white Goathead looks great! blue helmet, white pants not so much." that sums it up pretty well I think. Something I also didn't consider at the time was the lack of silver on the uniform, which leads to yellow becoming a little more overwhelming than it should be. 

 

 

Hey remember me talking about yellow becoming overwhelming? Well it's another case of me finally giving the Sabres a true yellow alternate. Silver also returns to the uniforms just to add some more color to the uniform and to be a little bit more historically correct. 

 

On 5/14/2023 at 12:43 PM, johne9109 said:

I think the only reason the Leafs haven't done a green uni like that is there will be idots that say "HaHa It LoOkS lIkE a PoT lEaF" the blue uni looks great

 

 

I didn't actually put that together... so flip the colors around and that problem should disappear. 

 

On 5/15/2023 at 4:59 AM, Silence of the Rams said:

I wonder if they used the top jersey they'd get past the second round

I don't think "look good, feel good, play good" has been the Leafs issues. 

[johne9109]

That green Toronto set looks nice, easy fix

[colinturner95]

13. Detroit Red Wings

 

 

My homerism is about to shine bright like a diamond. I wasn't sold on these at first but after seeing them in action, I think their better than people gave them credit for. If they didn't use black and just went with a straight color swap, easily top-5 or best in show. But since the black is there, more middle of the pack. Even I couldn't justify putting them above most of the Pacific Division uniforms. 

 

 

 

• Option #A is the logical choice, just eliminating black and going for a color swap. 
• Option #B is the unhinged option, going for an all-black look with red stripes and white numbers

 

The new option, which isn't that new since it came from my Nike NHL series goes back to the 1928-1929 Cougars uniforms, this time going red with a retro Red Wings logo and the fonts and script from the 2014 Winter Classic uniforms. 

 

C&C appreciated!

[johne9109]

6 hours ago, colinturner95 said:

13. Detroit Red Wings

 

 

My homerism is about to shine bright like a diamond. I wasn't sold on these at first but after seeing them in action, I think their better than people gave them credit for. If they didn't use black and just went with a straight color swap, easily top-5 or best in show. But since the black is there, more middle of the pack. Even I couldn't justify putting them above most of the Pacific Division uniforms. 

 

 

 

• Option #A is the logical choice, just eliminating black and going for a color swap. 
• Option #B is the unhinged option, going for an all-black look with red stripes and white numbers

 

The new option, which isn't that new since it came from my Nike NHL series goes back to the 1928-1929 Cougars uniforms, this time going red with a retro Red Wings logo and the fonts and script from the 2014 Winter Classic uniforms. 

 

C&C appreciated!

Totally agree. When Detroits jersey was revealed I was like eh, but seeing it as a whole kit sells it a lot better. They shold've gone with white over black like you did here. You're 1926 inspired uniform is great!

[colinturner95]

12. Pittsburgh Penguins 

 

 

Robo Pen rockets this up the lists for me (and I personally think its the better logo, but that's is neither here nor there). What does this jersey in for me against the remaining 11 teams, is that it feels unnecessarily busy and that mostly comes from the pants I think, since the team opted for the same home and away pants instead of the blank pants worn with the original uniforms. Besides that, I just don't think it's better than the jerseys I have in front of it. 

 

  

 

Rather than solve the easy problem and just go with blank pants, I shifted to the more unique uniform from the same era, going for the asymmetric, gradient jersey in some new colors: 

• Option A sees the base go gold, which shifts the yellow and black around. 
• Option B goes white, coming along with a darker gradient to offset for the lighter base. 
• Option C was a late edition, going back to the day one colors, even giving Robo Pen a color swap.

C&C welcome!

[sky1324]

The double blue take is genius. Nice work as always!

[johne9109]

I prefer A or B

[VampyrRabbit]

The gold triangle in the Pittsburgh logo represents the golden triangle of the center of Pittsburgh and has been a shade of gold every time it's been on a Pens sweater, so on option C it looks really strange and stands out more than if had been in the black and gold.

For that reason, A or B are my choices.

[colinturner95]

11. St. Louis Blues

 

 

These were so close to cracking the top ten. Taking a prototype jersey that never saw the ice and breathing new life into it. Crafty as hell. I really don't have anything against these, other than I felt there were ten better Reverse Retros in front of it in my opinion. 

 

 

I didn't think I had a better option for the prototype jersey in terms of colors so I shifted to the first NHL franchise in St. Louis, the Eagles. While it might be better suited for an outdoor game, I took the Eagles' one jersey and flipped it blue and gold, using the Blues' original logo and the St. Louis arch from the prototype jersey logo. 

 

Simple but elegant still.