Wednesday: $ale of the Century

So Ryan has come up with a plan for the blog in regards to the giveaway he was talking about. We will be selling digital portrait of jerseys on the blog for $5 CDN ($3.75 USD) or 3 of them for $10  ($7.50 USD). With a purchase of these portraits, you'll be automatically entered into a drawing for a special prize from HJC. One portrait gets you one entry and three portraits gets you three entries. Full details here. If you have any questions you can ask in the comments of that page. The winner of the drawing will get a $50 gift certificate to IceJerseys.com! Having just looked at that site, while I'd be ecstatic if they had soccer gear too, you can own replicas of some of the greatest or most infamous hockey jerseys ever, such as the Canucks Flying V or gradient jerseys.

NEWS: The NHL is going Global! Again! The Avalanche and Senators will head to Sweden to start the 2017-18 season. Why those teams? Wouldn't the Avs be one of the last teams the NHL wants to feature after their disastrous 2016-17 campaign? As well as, to be honest, the two teams with the worst primary uniform set in the NHL at the moment? Well, not when you have Gabriel Landeskog as your team captain going up against fellow Swedish NHL captain Erik Karlsson. Here's the official logo.

With the dominant navy and gold, the trim of the brighter blue and silver add a nice compliment to a fairly basic yet efficient logo.

Rating: 85%

MORE NEWS:

A report in the Edmonton Jounral has confirmed that the Oilers will wear their alternate orange jerseys during the playoffs.

Wait alternate? I meant home orange jerseys.

They will also carry their orange jerseys to next year since the NHL is prohibiting third jerseys for next year. Here's the full story.

VOTES:

COTW as usual, plus the Hat Competition. New feature: the poll for the competition vote is now on the side of the blog with the normal votes! It still appears on the competition page itself along with the actual entries, but you can open up the album of entries on Photobucket on one browser window and keep me here on another one, and you can vote while you torture yourself with my writing.

REMINDERS:

COTW March 17-23 vote (ends Friday @ noon ET)

Hat Competition Top 3 vote (ends Friday @ noon ET)

ON TO THE CONCEPTS!

Anthony C: Montreal Maroons Concept

So here we have a case of one of two things: 1) You aren't listening to my feedback or 2) This was sent in before my post last week. The only differences this week from last is that you forgot to add the sleeve numbers. All other execution notes you should know by now since we have tried to hammer them into your mind. From an idea standpoint, this looks like a decent color scheme and one that works fairly well here. But using a blank Toronto Maple Leafs logo for a team that used to play in the NHL alongside them is not the best idea, though you're correct that in this day and age, the stand-alone "Block M" logo isn't a strong enough logo. Not a fan of the off color nameplates. That font doesn't work and it's overused.

Rating: 40%


Anthony C: Whitby Fury (OJHL) Concept

This is an interesting case. You have a decent idea for a concept, but I will not go into detail. I'll explain why with your next concept, alongside why I'm rating this as a ZERO.

Rating: 0%


Anthony C: Winnipeg Blues (MJHL) Concept

Change some logos, change the names on the back and change the shades of blue? I don't think so. This is the same concept as above. That will never fly here. Don't EVER do that again. You can have similar looks between jerseys in your repertoire here on the blog but if its this lazy you're not going to get a good score. Change your act, stop mass producing concepts and pay attention.

Rating: 0%


Brooks F: Carolina Hurricanes Concept

Well after that I look for something to calm myself down and I think I have some to the wrong place. If this doesn't scream 90s, which was your goal based on the file name I received in the weekly dose of concepts from Ryan, I don't know what does. The Hurricanes had fairly crazy uniforms once they moved from Hartford but this takes it beyond that. This gives the infamous Fisherman jerseys a run for their money. And considering how much I love them for their 90s craziness, I have to rate this one high. Fantastic execution as usual from you. Black gear works here. Not a fan of the socks though because as crazy as the Islanders uniforms were, their socks were tame.

Rating: 90%


Jake M: Liberty Flames (NCAA) Concept

Here we have an appropriately fairly conservative look (Liberty University is a historically conservative institution) for the Flames (not the Eagles, the Flames, don't ask). Biggest porblem I have here is the grey fading into the white on the dark jersey. Maybe if you kept the arm patterns perfectly identical on both jerseys, meaning a large white cuff adjacent to the striping, you wouldn't have this problem. No number outlines are a nice choice here for the purposes of color balance.

Rating: 87%


Ryan C: Lethbridge Hurricanes (WHL) Concept

I'm a sucker for white yokes, as I have stated here numerous times, and this concept is no different. A clean look for the Hurricanes. The Hurricanes are now completely free of their Capitals-based designs, having dumped the wordmark logo in 2013 for their current and better logo and having dumped the Capitals style jerseys last season. Not a fan of that wordmark alternate logo on the shoulders though. maybe another pant stripe or none at all?

Rating: 86%


TC M: Atlanta Gladiators (ECHL) Concept

One thing that hampers your design here is that the striping looks weird from the front. The striping is correct though because it stops at the template lines that were eliminated completely from various aspects of the concept. The gold color is hard to work with in regards to template lines and certain shades of other colors too. Otherwise this is a brilliant idea. If the striping was parallel to the sword it would be even better, because look at some of the lines on the helmet in the logo. They are parallel to the sword as well. Execution note: the numbers are massive though and they squish the nameplate against the yoke. The logo can also use an outline on the dark jersey too.

Rating: 60%


Zack R: Team Scotland (IIHF) Concept

I always love when international jerseys try to incorporate flag patterns into their jerseys. This is no exception. However, execution note: all striping overlaps template lines. While this is also a great design, One thing ruins it: the logo... or lack thereof. Wordmark logos do not belong on a jersey unless its the NCAA and even then it's kind of bad. Blue helmet please. Maybe flatten the sock stripes too?

Rating: 65%


The WINNER Of my Concept of the Week Nomination is:

 BROOKS F 

 CAROLINA HURRICANES CONCEPT 

Well that does it for me this week. Buy these portraits Ryan has made available, because every purchase could make you a winner. A winner unlike my Islanders of late. See you next week when the Isles are on their deathbeds.