Wednesday: It's Wednesday!

Hey there and howdy on a glorious Wednesday! This week has been pretty great on the blog, a whole bunch of 'Get Your Own Jersey' entries have come in. It's fun getting to critique these competition entries for once instead of posting them and keeping quiet about them.

NHL Playoffs, second round has gotten underway and my hat bracket from last week worked, the Lightning didn't want to be left out so they made sure to win their game 7 to advance. I didn't join the HJC Bracket Challenge because I'm a big jerk and forgot so I started listing my predictions with this year's playoff hats. Here it is again to refresh your memory

So far it looks as if all of those could come true, Washington doesn't want to go down without a fight though...Anyway! Enough of that, I'm excited to get to the concepts today! But first of course...

Vote. Vote. Vote. and Get. Your. Entries. In!

COTW April 26 - May 2 vote (ends Friday @ 11:59pm Eastern

Get Your Own Jersey Comp (ends Sunday @ 11:59pm Eastern)

The cool thing about this competition is that it's just AHL teams. Sure we get the occasional AHL concept, but it's usually just new teams or recently rebranded and sometimes like, a Marlies concepts or something. But this one seems to really be getting everyone's creative juices flowing...gross... Anyway, I would like to start today off with my favorite team! My Hometown Guys, the Rockford IceHogs!

Rockford Icehogs - J-Rob

J-Rob keeps the red and white, but brings two new colors into play for the Hogs, a darker shade of red and blue! The darker red and blue come from the logo, and while it does make for a more unique jersey, I'd bring in just the blue. Not saying the maroon/dark red looks bad, just a personal preference, although, double shades of any color tends to look good. I LOVE that the pig butt is back, but I'd put it on the shoulders since CCM would like their spot on the upper back. I see no problem with having one pig butt and one Hawks logo in the yoke. I'd stick to their current font, yeah this one is rounded and kind of fits the team's branding, but their current Blackhawks font is a strong block font that would go well with this jersey. I've always kind of wondered if they'd bring blue back on the jerseys but I guess we'll just wait and see.

My one concern is, if this would be an alternate, would they use the same pants/gloves/helmet? There's no black on the jersey anywhere but the logos and that might look a bit off.

Good look on its own though, couple tweaks would make it great. It'd be nice to see the rest of the equipment too.

Rating: 8/10

Rockford Icehogs - Jeff H.

Really detail oriented here. I like it. Jeff remembers to put the CCM, AHL, AND sponsorship patches. He did his research too, putting the correct Pepsi patch. Black jersey for the Hogs, I always liked it. Chest stripe, almost always looks good. I like the arm and hem stripes too, but I think the red stripes are too big. It's fine on the chest but the arms it just sticks out weird. I think the current roundel logo on their beige alternate would be the best to use here but I don't know if that's an easy one to find, Sportslogos.net doesn't even have it. The striping on the socks are huge and the pants look really nice. Also, the striping on the glove? Brilliant!

I like the white/red/white pattern on the glove more than the red/white/red pattern everywhere else.

Rating: 7/10

Iowa Wild - Colin M.

Colin goes a bit 'Wild' here.... I hope that was his goal...to make one of us writers type that out. Congratulations Colin...you did it. Anyway I think the wordmark logo would go better with the striping pattern used here, especially the shoulders. That's such an old school look that the current logo with the Iowa outline looks out of place. Also, State outlines rarely look good o jerseys, you're better off with just the roundel. It'd make McElroy happy too. I like that the arm/hem striping resembles the shoulder stripes, but I'd add a second set on the arms. Colors are nice, but I'm just not a fan of white and wheat/vintage white/beige being together on a jersey, although this is one of the nicer instances I've seen it.

Also! I don't know that Colin has ever had one, but I see an execution errrrror! On the back of the jersey, the collar is missing its gold stripe. And if I really wanted to get picky I'd say you're missing your AHL and CCM logos but oh well, I don't feel like getting picky.

Rating: 8/10

Albany Devils - David P.

The use of more black than white on the Devils jersey gives this jersey a darker feel than usual. The black logo is a nice touch, but I can't say the black name and numbers would turn out well. The white outline helps the numbers but I can't say the same for the name. It's nothing revolutionary but the design looks good in these colors. This would make for a top notch alternate once something is figured out for the name on the back.

Rating: 8/10

Rockford Icehogs - Jets96 

Jets Jets Jets...My friend, my dude, my co-writer. What do we say about this? Well first off, it would be nice to see the blue come back. It was featured in the club's original jerseys, which were old Nashville jerseys, look it up, I'm serious. They're ugly but have a place in my heart as one of my favorites because I'm a homer. But they are the last full time IceHogs jerseys to feature blue outside the logo. Jets says "screw it, base color". I think blue would look best as a trim color on their current jerseys or something similar, Jets just wants a blue jersey, and it's not as bad as I would have thought. The Blackhawks colors/striping works well with it. I'd like to see some of the other color combos for the stripes because I feel like maybe black would work best as the outer stripes or inner stripe. I'm sure you tried them all. The butt is back, YES. I think their current pants would look just fine with these. I notice an Avalanche issue here though, Blue jersey with a bunch of black equipment, and it looks better here than in Colorado so they might want to fix that.

Rating: 8.5/10

Ontario Reign - Jeff H.

The thin stripes go so well with the logo. Make a black version of this and make it a set. The O Dragon logo looks great too. Give your new main set an alternate and plop that baby on the front. The pants don't exactly match but that's expected since they're Kings pants. The font is big and bold, and while, usually I'd like it, I think here you should go with a thinner font, or at least something normal.

Also, the fact that the Reign/Kings put the Kings crown in the new Reign logo instead of the dragon is a crime to humanity and someone should be tried for their incompetence.

All that being said, I think we've got a front runner for the Reign in the competition.

Rating: 9/10

Toronto Marlies - Colin M.

Oh wow, Colin is sure making a strong case to win the competition early. These colors look great together. Not sold on the thin white stripes and name, maybe if the logos had a small amount of white in them I'd be more into it. Pretty basic jersey design but it's nothing the Leafs or Marlies have ever done...to my knowledge and this just goes to show, you can make an ordinary striping pattern look amazing with the right colors.

Rating: 9.5/10

What a great day! So many IceHogs! And two of the Hogs concepts featured Spencer Abbott's name on the back. THANKS FOR HIM TORONTO HE'S BEEN ON FIRE! Except...too bad they had to trade TJ Brennan for him....damn..... Oh well, Hogs/Griffins in the second round! Go Hogs!