Three NHL Seasons of the RBK Edge Uniform System

[Generic]

If the Penguins do have a Vegas gold alt. jersey, i'll be dissapointed. Good side color, I picture it to be a terrible solid colour on a jersey.

[Morgan33]

Might as well keep this thread going, whats the concensus on Tampa's Uniforms? Anybody like their Edge redesign or are people partial to their orginal jerseys? Or should they start over? I think the new logo would look good on the old uniform if it was tweaked a bit (add some more blue, and use less White). I was also wondering what people on this boards opinions are when it comes to jerseys that have seen Championships won in them (Tampa won the Cup in 2004 in the jersey below). Should teams be forced to stick with championship looks?

[Sodboy13]

The logo is an improvement over what they wore previously. The jerseys are a major downgrade; the black and blue are indistinguishable on TV, the template striping is silly, and so is the front number. The pants are pretty sharp. With new, allegedly competent ownership in place, some uniform tweaks would be appreciated. There definitely needs to be better execution to create a contrast between the blue and black. And there's no reason not to have the secondary logo, with no wordmark, on the front of the sweater.

It would be nice if they went back to either the Paintbrush or the electric number font, too. With a spiffy, vertically arched nameplate.

[uniformity]

Tampa's new logo is a major downgrade. It has an awful font and the lightning bolt looks ridiculously cartoony. What's worse is that the team won a cup just three years previous with the old one. I think a minor upgrade to the old logo would have been much better. Just get rid of the superfluous word "lightning" and call it a day.

The edge jerseys are totally boring and poorly designed. Blue and black do not contrast when placed right next to each other. Again the old template was much better. As for fonts I'm partial to classic oxford lettering or custom fonts with angular edges. Paintbrush says 90's to me.

[Generic]

Tampa's new logo is a major downgrade. It has an awful font and the lightning bolt looks ridiculously cartoony. What's worse is that the team won a cup just three years previous with the old one. I think a minor upgrade to the old logo would have been much better. Just get rid of the superfluous word "lightning" and call it a day.

The edge jerseys are totally boring and poorly designed. Blue and black do not contrast when placed right next to each other. Again the old template was much better. As for fonts I'm partial to classic oxford lettering or custom fonts with angular edges. Paintbrush says 90's to me.

Really? I love the new logos compared to the old. The font change for the Tampa Bay script is the best part, the rest is just good for a logo. It was a great logo update. The uniforms suck though, so i'll agree with you there.

[BBTV]

IMO, Tampa's uniforms have always looked incredibly unprofessional and bush league. I guess it all starts with their name, the "Lightning", which leads to mostly bush league logo concepts, and just doesn't sound professional. The black and blue (as stated before) make the uniform just too dark, and don't have nearly enough contrast. The old logo, with the paintbrush font looked like it just had all of it's pieces patched together, and the new one isn't much better (actually, I think the italicized font looks even more minor league.)

I actually liked their first number style, even though I found it to clash with the rest of the league. I wouldn't want to see it return, but for some silly reason, I still like it. The paint brush set was a complete joke.

I vote that they start over, maybe go with a navy (or dark royal) and gold scheme, or Orlando Thunder green (yes, I just said that). Make a simple logo with just the bolt and a circle, and maybe a TB. Or, if they can't think of anything new, go with the state-bolt alt logo just recolored. They could also go a more traditional route and do the wordmark thing - in cases like theirs, I wouldn't be opposed to that. JUST KEEP THE WORD "BOLTS" OFF OF THE SWEATERS. That's embarassing.

If they must keep the name "lightning", then I'll concede that the pants are pretty cool.

[IceCap]

Tampa's new logo is a major downgrade. It has an awful font and the lightning bolt looks ridiculously cartoony. What's worse is that the team won a cup just three years previous with the old one. I think a minor upgrade to the old logo would have been much better. Just get rid of the superfluous word "lightning" and call it a day.

Now I've usually been one to state that teams should stick with championship era looks, but an exception has to be made for the Tampa Bay Lightning. Their Cup-era logos and uniform sucked. The old primary is terrible. The two different fonts, and the amateur bolt that just short of comes out of nowhere, around the same place that the circle just ends. It's a mess.

The new logo, while not perfect, is a definite upgrade, and better yet it still invokes the imagery of the old logo, so it's not a complete break with the Cup era identity. So the new logos are fine. It's the jerseys that suck. The black and blue are so close that putting them together like they are on their current Penguins knock-off jerseys just looks terrible.

Ideally the Lightning should take their alternate sweaters, lose the minor league BOLTS script, and use the current logos on it, and create a white version for the road.

So in summery, old sweater and logos, crap.

New logos, ok.

New primary sweaters, crap.

New alternate sweaters, ok.

New alternate BOLTS scrips, crap.

Rearrange elements until you get something halfway decent.

[Sodboy13]

I actually liked their first number style, even though I found it to clash with the rest of the league.

Those "4"s were awesome.

[BBTV]

I actually liked their first number style, even though I found it to clash with the rest of the league.

Those "4"s were awesome.

Exactly why I liked it (and why I liked Roman Hamrlik even though I didn't really know who he was.)

[IceCap]

I actually liked their first number style, even though I found it to clash with the rest of the league.

Those "4"s were awesome.

I wouldn't mind a return to those, in all honesty. With the recent faux-vintage trend sweeping the league a little modernity here and there would be refreshing.

[BBTV]

I actually liked their first number style, even though I found it to clash with the rest of the league.

Those "4"s were awesome.

I wouldn't mind a return to those, in all honesty. With the recent faux-vintage trend sweeping the league a little modernity here and there would be refreshing.

Just like there's faux-vintage, there's also faux-futuristic. Modern = contemporary. Not "TATC"ish.

[IceCap]

I don't see where I advocated faux-futuristic.

[The_Admiral]

This is listed as "unused" on the mothership. It wouldn't stop the Lightning from being a useless waste of time, but it would certainly make a nicer crest. Maybe if they lightened the blue to an "electric blue" sort of along the lines of what the Mavericks use, or maybe an even brighter blue still, you'd get better contrast and a better lightning motif.

You know, they really should've just called the team the "Tampa Bay Bolts" if they wanted to go with a lightning identity. It sounds a little minor league, yes, but "Tampa Bay Lightning" sounds a lot minor league.

[DustDevil61]

OK, I'll start on the Lightning, since we're here at this point in the discussion. I'm normally no fan at all of black/blue concepts (the two most-overused colors in sports uniforms), but if you could separate the black and blue by some white, drop the silver (as there isn't much of it, nor has there ever been), and go with blue as the main color, then you might have a decent look. I'd say to make the lightning bolt pointed on both ends (i.e., not the "flat top" look that makes it so 90s and dated), separating a "T" and a "B" in the circle for the main logo, with the Florida outline as the alternate. Perhaps instead of black, you could go with a dark gray (i.e., to give it more of a "stormy" look) that contrasts better with the blue they have now.

As for the entire RBK Edge design, the one thing that bugs me the most about it is the "dipped" hemming. It really makes the traditional, horizontal hem stripes on the teams look really odd (look no further than the Flyers and Blackhawks), and there's less room to be creative, leading to a lot of plain bottom hems on uniforms. The Edge has grown slightly on me since it came out, but the horizontal hem still looks worlds better than the Edge system. If I had any say, I'd let teams be able to adopt the traditional hem stripe for both home and road should they so choose, with an Edge design for their alternate. Or they could just go with the traditional horizontal stripe for all three sets.

That way, we could return teams like the Oilers to a more traditional look and away from their "practice jersey" sets while keeping the few good parts the Edge design has to offer.

[charger77]

Regarding the Lightning, could the arrivial of Yzerman bring a more traditional uniform?

-Dan

[twi]

As a huge fan of the team, here are my thoughts: The old logo was very clunky, it didn't really represent much other than the words written on it. The jerseys themselves I didn't mind too much, they're basicially New Jersey's jersies in a different color.

The new logo is better, but still not perfect. The jersey template needs to go. It's the same as Ottawa and Pittsburgh but the colors are just too easily combined together, especially on the home set. As for the third, I'm glad to see a blue jersey (that isn't an out and out oddity like the original third) but I'm not a fan of the Bolts script. That's not the team name.

I am glad that two things remained though, the under arm victory stripes and the design on the pants. The former is unique to the team and the latter is somehting you don't see too much in the NHL.

All in all, I'd say they rank middle of the road in the NHL. Nothing outstanding about them but nothing too hideous either.

Since this topic is about the NHL as a while, I would immediately dump the jerseys in Dallas, Vancouver, and Edmonton (even the horribly dated orange and blue) and start over. Calgary, remove the flag patches. Philadelphia, lose the nameplate bars, somehow make the sleeve numbers fit in the stripe. Montreal, please, please use the white jersey with the mid-chest striping that mirrors the current red one. Love that jersey.

[Morgan33]

OK, I'll start on the Lightning, since we're here at this point in the discussion. I'm normally no fan at all of black/blue concepts (the two most-overused colors in sports uniforms), but if you could separate the black and blue by some white, drop the silver (as there isn't much of it, nor has there ever been), and go with blue as the main color, then you might have a decent look. I'd say to make the lightning bolt pointed on both ends (i.e., not the "flat top" look that makes it so 90s and dated), separating a "T" and a "B" in the circle for the main logo, with the Florida outline as the alternate. Perhaps instead of black, you could go with a dark gray (i.e., to give it more of a "stormy" look) that contrasts better with the blue they have now.

As for the entire RBK Edge design, the one thing that bugs me the most about it is the "dipped" hemming. It really makes the traditional, horizontal hem stripes on the teams look really odd (look no further than the Flyers and Blackhawks), and there's less room to be creative, leading to a lot of plain bottom hems on uniforms. The Edge has grown slightly on me since it came out, but the horizontal hem still looks worlds better than the Edge system. If I had any say, I'd let teams be able to adopt the traditional hem stripe for both home and road should they so choose, with an Edge design for their alternate. Or they could just go with the traditional horizontal stripe for all three sets.

That way, we could return teams like the Oilers to a more traditional look and away from their "practice jersey" sets while keeping the few good parts the Edge design has to offer.

Would anybody be at all upset if the NHL just admitted the Reebok Edge Uniform System was fiasco from the beginning (How did that moisture wicking material turn out?) and went back to the CCM 6100 series? I know I wouldn't.

[Corvus]

Admitting that a mistake was made is not something that ever happens where Gary Betman is concerned. I suppose they'll go to whichever manufacturer gives them the best deal when their current contract is up. But they'll never admit to the change having been a mistake.

[BBTV]

I don't see where I advocated faux-futuristic.

Just sayin' that those 4s were pretty TATCish, not "modern".

[IceCap]

I don't see where I advocated faux-futuristic.

Just sayin' that those 4s were pretty TATCish, not "modern".

Ah gotcha. They were still pretty cool though.