Thursday: Colorful Countdown

Hellllooooo HJC! How's everyone doing on this Thursday? I hope you all are doing well today, I know I'm quite happy as I write this Wednesday night after the Pens game, but anyways, I think it's a good day for some concepts eh?

So I think I'll start a new weekly thing here on my post, where I'll take a look at my favorite uniform matchups from the NHL over the past week, and narrow it down to the top 5 since there will be a lot to look at otherwise. This will start from last Thursday and end after Wednesday night, since when this post goes live the Thursday games will not have started yet. Anyways, let's get on with it!

In no particular order: (all images from NHL.com)

Pittsburgh Penguins vs Montréal Canadiens

Maybe I'm biased because of the Penguins, but it'd be hard to say this is a bad jersey matchup either way. As will be the case with all of my choices, this game has a great color matchup, with red, blue, black, and gold all being here. Great game (for the Pens at least), and great uniforms.

St. Louis Blues vs New Jersey Devils

As I said for the last game, another great color matchup, with 2 blues, yellow, red, and black all here. The designs themselves are simple, good looking, and, especially in New Jersey's case, I'd say classic at this point.

Edmonton Oilers vs Chicago Blackhawks

In this case I can definitely say that both of these designs are classic, the Oilers coming from the Gretzky era and the Hawks uniforms are...well...the Hawks, I know a lot of people would consider them to have some of the best jerseys in the league. Another great color matchup, red, black, blue, orange, and if you want to go that deep there are a few more colors in just the Hawks' logo.

Detroit Red Wings vs Dallas Stars

Again, colors. Detroit with their simple and beautiful red, and Dallas with their unique and also beautiful victory green, along with black in the mix. Dallas a good combination of slightly modern yet also classic on their design, while Detroit is definitely a classic design. Great matchup.

Detroit Red Wings vs Toronto Maple Leafs

Detroit makes their second appearance on the list with another original 6 team, the Leafs. With this, of course both jerseys are a more classic than modern design. The color matchup is much simpler with only blue and red in this one. Ah the classic red vs blue. It looks great.

Runner ups: Boston vs New York Islanders, Boston vs Montréal, Montréal vs New York Islanders (interesting combination for these 3, isn't it?)

Bonus: Worst of the week - Colorado Avalanche vs Arizona Coyotes

I'm not going to explain this one, nor do I think I have to. Just a few ugly jerseys here.

Runner up: Calgary vs Florida

I'll also have a weekly challenge for you guys now, redesign this worst matchup to make it look good! This may be easy, it may not, it just depends on the matchup I suppose. This week it's Arizona and Colorado, so go fix it, if you're up for the challenge.

So hopefully you guys like this new little "segment", I think it'll be fun to look at the past week and see how all of the uniforms match up, both good and bad. I think I'll be continuing this from now on, unless you guys hate it or something. But you know what else could look good? Your jerseys! You can design some for the Giffins competition and have it actually worn maybe, or just submit it here and it'll have a chance for the COTW, which is also a nice prize. And while your making your future COTW, how about voting for the one this week. And the best concept for all of October, and for the World Cup Comp? The power is in your hands, so go use it.

COTY-October vote (ends Friday @ 11:59pm Eastern)

COTW Nov 1-7 vote (ends Friday @ 11:59pm Eastern)

World Cup 96 votes (ends Friday @ 11:59pm Eastern)
GR Griffins Comp (Nov. 23rd @ 11:59 pm Eastern)

Concepts? Concepts.

John M. - St. Lawrence University

I don't believe I've seen you around here before, so unless I'm wrong welcome! If this is happens to be your first concept too, it's a great start. The execution is pretty good, but the vertical stitching should stop at the hem stripes on the white/vintage white/cream/whateveryouwannacallit jersey, but you do it just fine on the red. I like the fact that the white jersey is that color as opposed to pure white, because teams don't often do that for their actual jerseys, and just use the pure white. The set would be better though if the designs matched assuming this is a home/away set. While mismatching jerseys can work they usually don't, so I'd stick with one design and go with it. If you'd go with the bottom design the stripes need to be thicker and the hem striping needs to move down just a tad. I also think the shield logo would look better, but that may just be my personal preference. The font fits well with this set too.

Overall: Good start (7.5/10)


Lucas D. - Philadelphia Flyers

If I was rating this based on bias I'd probably have to go into the negatives, but that's not the point of these reviews so I'll put my bias aside here. I think the logo is a good start, but looks more like a mish mash of different things than it does a complete logo. I think, just for the logo's sake, it would be a good idea to lower the bell down below its support that it's hanging from, and then make the wings black to match the bell. Some strokes would look good from there, but that should be a start. On the execution side, the liberty bell is blurry, and the Flyers logo on the top is pixelated. There's also some seemingly random orange outline inside the bell's crack, and the white that's inside the logo itself has a yellowish tint to it.

Overall: Also a good start and a good idea to expand on (7/10)


Lucas D. - Tampa Bay Lightning

Lucas' second concept for today is for a team just down south of the last one. There also is a new logo on this one, and I would say that it is not an improvement. The logo is similar, but the bolt itself doesn't seem very uniform and seems too top heavy, and the circle isn't really unique or anything, just a circle, but I wouldn't mind their actual logo becoming more circular than ovular. I'm not sure what I think about the blue changing shades, I think I'd have to see it on the ice to really know. The striping however I like better, at it's more complex than just one stripe. I like the addition of gray/silver too but it needs to be darkened in order to stand out from the white better. On the execution sides, the numbers are very pixelated. There are colors in places where they shouldn't be, like what almost looks like a white outline between the blue and silver on the white jersey, and extra white pixels outside of the gray outline on the blue one.

Overall: Good design idea, but this one needs some work (6.5/10)


Ryan C. - Dallas Stars

Our last concept is a new set for a team who has one of the newest sets in the league right now (only 3 other teams have gotten new unis since they unveiled their new ones). My overall thoughts on this is that the black design would be great for the alternate that we've all wanted them to get since their redesign, but I wouldn't want this as their primary set. The Stars should "own" green in the league, or victory green at least, because I would like to see Minny in green too. The design is classy looking with a chest stripe, and I think the roundel was a good logo choice. Could the others have worked (aside from the wordmark)? Yes. Does this? Also yes. The font fits in with this concept too. I don't really have any negatives aside from wanting a green jersey, because if there is a green version of this then maybe we can talk about it being a good main set.

Overall: Dallas take notes, especially for the black one (9/10) and my COTW Nomination

Well that's a wrap for today. Now that I look back on the entire post, it was a very colorful day here including the weekly matchup countdown. In the concepts themselves the only 2 colors that overlapped at all (aka used in more than one of them) were white and black, that's pretty diverse. I hope you guys enjoyed this post, thanks for reading, and I'll see you again next week!