Monday: Great Outdoors & A Little More

Finally get to review another Jets jersey 5 years later.

Welcome to the Monday post! Hopefully I live up to the hype Caz gave in yesterday's intro with this intro. Lots of jerseys unveiled this week so let's make haste.

We'll start off with the jerseys that were NOT the Heritage Classic jersey:

In the ECHL the Greenville Swamp Rabbits are replacing their re-logoed Road Warriors jerseys from last season and have unveiled new jerseys for next season, taking inspiration from the Avalanche it seems....

Photo from swamprabbits.com

On the bright side we have lots of orange and a thicker form of Bettman apron piping that looks at least slightly better than what we're used to. As is this seems to be trend with the recent Missouri Mavericks jerseys looking very similar, I do think with the colour scheme this looks slightly better than the Mavs. It is disappointing to see a team with such a unique and well design logo to have their logo slapped on a template that teams in 2007 were being criticized for using. It's an improvement, but not as big of one as many hoped I'm sure.

Rating: 6.75/10

Meanwhile in the same state, the Stingrays have a new "Affiliate Pride" jerseys, where they'll slap their logo on their NHL/AHL team, and this one is no different.

Photo from stingrayshockey.com

Of course this is only an alternate and the Stingrays will keep their pretty good looking current set. It's something I like teams doing once or twice a year, and at least the colours between the affiliate and NHL team match. If the Stingrays used this template after the Capitals were done with it, I would be fine with it, but right now I don't mind it, looks okay. It's not original but at least they are up front with that. I could see using this jersey in NHL 17.

Rating: 7/10

In the AHL, the Wolfpack doing what many had hoped and taking the Rangers' Stadium Series jerseys and making them their own.

Photos from @WolfpackAHL

Of course I am a fan of these jerseys, but how big of a fan am I? The white jersey we've seen before and it looks much better as a Wolfpack jersey than for the Blueshirts. The blue jersey has well balanced colours and again looks sharp. The red jersey from the back is gorgeous, but the lack of white on the front makes me wish there was a white script instead of blue, if they changed that

it'll be the best of the bunch. It's off seeing angled numbers kept as part of the jersey but it'll add some style. Also not a fan of the blank hems that have seam marks for non-existent striping; reminds me of what the MLB does with their authentic jerseys: cutting off pinstripes where the jersey tucks in. Finally, some may say this is nitpicking, but tie downs seem REALLY unnecessary on these jerseys. I'd settle for the inverted tie downs the SS jerseys used, and Anaheim has on their jerseys.

Rating: 8.75/10

Just this afternoon the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins copied their NHL affiliate and have dropped Vegas Gold, going back to the 1980s. On top of that the roundel logo on the black jersey is finally moved to the shoulder where it has belonged since 1999. This is the first time the Baby Pens have had matching primary logos on their home and road in franchise history (or at least since they were the Cornwall Aces). 

Photo from @samkometmania

Gotta like the switch, though I did really like the way the red & vegas gold looked together. I would have hoped something new striping wise would have come from this but this seems to be par for the course in the AHL these days (case in point Ontario, Stockton, Bakersfield, Toronto, St. John's, Manitoba, Albany, Bridgeport, Charlotte's home, Iowa's away, Rockford, San Jose and Utica all wear exact copies of their NHL affiliates). 

Rating: 7.25/10 but still an improvement 

Photo from nwhl.zone

Our final non-NHL stop takes us to the NWHL, where the four teams are holding a vote for new jerseys this year. While I like all the designs, only Boston & Buffalo really improve while New York & Connecticut already had great jerseys and some may call the Riveters a downgrade. I can especially see the diagonal script jersey being disliked by some who like logos on their jerseys. My votes went to the Riveters' diagonal jersey, the Prides' late 90s Bruins jersey, the Connecticut Whale non-wavy jersey, and the vertically striped Beauts jersey. Overall, impressive but if the teams are going to do this every year then I expect more concepts and better designs to beat these out. Maybe even a Boston jersey not based on a Bruins jersey?!

Rating: NYR (7.5/10, 7.75/10) BOS (8/10, 7.75/10) CON (7/10, 8.5/10) BUF (8.85/10, 6/10). BTW I find it weird the NWHL shop doesn't sell replica jerseys which is disappointing because it'd be something I'd dig to have in my collection. 

Heritage Classic: EDM

Photo from @reebokhockey 

I love this jersey inside the Rexall Centre/new Edmonton arena, however I got my hopes up for a new jersey. At least Montréal gave us a throwback in 2011 that looked SLIGHTLY different with the numbers. This is exactly the same with a patch thrown on the shoulders for good measure. Well WOPDIFRIGGINDO how exciting. Edmonton's response to this game is...meh at best, their alumni game jerseys make sense since majority of the team wore the original NHL Oilers jerseys. However seeing a 1979 Avco Cup rematch would've be awesome. Seeing a white version of the orange jersey from the Jacques Plantes era would have been better. SOMETHING NEW! That being said I do agree that this will be a good looking match up, and seeing as the jerseys are from similar eras we won't have the same issue from 2011where one team was wearing something from the 50s and the other from the mid 20s.

Rating: A disappointing 8/10

Heritage Classic: WPG 

Photo from markscheifle55

I love this jersey and want the Jets to use this as an alternate full time. The striping is gorgeous, it's a perfect throwback! The attention to detail in the stitching and pants are so nice to see with the recent decline in detail we've seen in jerseys. It's nice to see the Jets taking advantage of their WHA history and their recent acquiring of the rights to the previous Jets logos. I rarely give actual jerseys a perfect 10, but this jersey is a perfect 10. I wanted to be cynical, I wanted to find something wrong but I just couldn't. Some site the jerseys are similar to the Blackhawks & Bruins but I'll give that a pass A) because of the yokes, and B) because of the historical ties & Avco Cups won in the originals.

Rating: 11/10

Now we wait for Las Vegas....or anything else really from any league, August generally speaking has a lot of unveilings historically. 

COTW has reset for the week and you should go vote for that! We also have COTY July to vote on.

The 365 Club contest has entered its voting phase, we'll be using the rarely seen top 4 voting system (ignore the top 5 below the entires). Check out the entries we saw last week and get voting.

Finally we are starting a new competition, the International Outdoor competition. Check out the contest page and look at the blurb Ryan wrote to give you some inspiration. I expect high things from this competition!

COTW-July vote (ends Friday @ noon Eastern)

COTW July 29-Aug 4 vote (ends Friday @ noon Eastern)

365 Club Top 4 Vote (ends Friday @ noon Eastern)

International Outdoor Classic Entry phase (ends August 19th @noon Easter

On to the 5 concepts for today!

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Winter Classic Concept (By: Brooks F.)

+ Right away I'm glad Brooks is using two of the best scripts in NHL history. These work well as logos are are one of the few scripts that do

+ Penguins jersey is fairly simple, a mix of the '67 numbers with the '68-'74 striping in athletic gold. It's a good mix of eras and nothing looks forced to add "historical features"

+ Blues jersey is to my best guess an original design with some inspiration from the 60s/70s, but other than that it's solid design with lots of blue and white 

+ Great execution 

-While I do like most of the white on the Blues jersey, I'd like to see the jersey without the white yoke 

- Having the skating penguin on a jersey 3 times is a bit much, I'd prefer to see a new shoulder patch rather than just a repeated logo 

Rating: 9/10  COTW Nom from me! 

Chicago Blackhawks Concept (By: Zeke G.)

+ Good logo choice, I love the idea of using that logo on a black jersey 

+ Striping is unique to the team but does have some inspiration from jerseys from the same era 

+ Good execution

- While I get you wanted the shoulder patches to match the jersey, keeping them the same colour as the primary logo would look better

- As Caz pointed out yesterday, the numbers on the back are off centred, and the NOB is too large  

- The shade of off white used here is to me at least very off putting. Going with either a darker wheat colour or a true white would work better 

Rating: 7.5/10 

Florida Panthers Concepts (By: Ryan C.)

+ If you told me you were going to recolour the current Jacksonville Jaguars logo to make it a Panthers logo, I'd admit I'd be sceptic, but Ryan seems to pull it off 

+ Colours are decently laid out in the striping 

+ Good execution

- The collars are the same on both the home and road, and I get that the yoke is blue so having a blue collar would look off, but it just looks like you took the yoke from the home and put it on the away 

- The tan stripe on the bottom of the blue jersey would look better and match the striping more if it was white

- This is more a preference point but I'd really do think a team in a place called Sunrise should use bright colours

- I don't like the stock standard block font used to replaced the current Panthers font 

Rating: 7.25/10 

Toronto Maple Leafs Concepts (By: Lucas D.)

+ I like the idea of this series (though I don't understand swapping Dallas & Toronto but it's not a bad choice) 

+ It's a good swap, i can see the inspirations from Dallas in the logo, said logo Lucas created is a good mix of the previous Leafs logo & Dallas's newest logo

+ The striping is a good mix, but not a full swap (depends on what Lucas is going for)

+ Great execution

- If this were a full swap, the shoulder patches would be an outline of the Ontario provincial map with a T angled in it, that would have been REALLY cool to see (concept idea) and added more realism to the concept

- The striping is semi-dallas like, but adding a blue yoke and 3 coloured striping with no spaces between them would ace this concept

Rating: 8.25/10 

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