Tim E. Takes on…the NHL

By Phil Hecken

With no new Amateur Pacifist uniforms on tap for the college game this weekend, the NFL finally devoid of pink, and with the greatest sport in the world having concluded with the Cards capturing their 11th World Series title, I thought it might be nice to take a look at some of the other major sports. Mercifully Unfortunately, with the NBA in a lockout, there’s no major sports playing. However, there is still hockey — or at least someone told me the season started, so I’ll just take it on faith that the pucksters are back at it. (I kid of course, and for years, a long time ago in a galaxy far away, I LOVED hockey…not so much anymore). But I digress.

So to get us into the spirit of the fastest game on ice, I’m pleased to bring you my buddy, Tim E. O’Brien, master of the tweak, to give us his idea of how some of the current teams might look if he were the uniform designer to the NHL. Here’s Tim:

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Tweaking the NHL
by Tim E. O’Brien

While the NBA is away, the NHL will play – and I for one couldn’t be happier. I love the NHL and the broad canvas with which a uniform designer has to work with, plus the wonderful uni quirks (like shoulder yokes and non-matching home and road unis) a hockey sweater allows you.

With that in mind, over the past few weeks I have taken to redesigning some of the NHL teams in desperate need of a makeover and some classics who just need some tweaks:

Anaheim Ducks – Home | Road | Third – For the Ducks, I return the fantastic and unique color scheme of the “mighty” era but keep the logos and crest of the modern era. While the Ducks unis have always had stripes at weird angles, I straighten out the stripes on this set.

For the third, I take inspiration from the movie that started it all but place it on the striping pattern of the other Ducks unis. I also added the modern wordmark.

Boston Bruins – Home | Road | Third – The most recent cup champions don’t need too much work. In fact, the home uni is almost unchanged and on the road uni I basically only change the shoulder yoke to yellow.

Where I take this set to a new place is on the third, which isn’t a throwback it’s just a yellow alternate in this set’s template, but definitely is influenced by jerseys of the Bruins’ past, including the Winter Classic uni.

Chicago Blackhawks – Home | Road | Third – The home and road unis are unchanged but the third harkens back to the barber-pole jerseys while staying in the current uni template (five colored stripes at the elbow and waist, with some edits).

Columbus Blue Jackets – Home | Road | Third – I don’t like the current logos the Stars Blue Jackets are currently throwing about. The Blue Jackets need less stars.

Instead of stars, I use an edited version hat from their current shoulder patches and turn that into their crest, sans-star. The new shoulder patch is also their main logo, which is made of two players holding sticks based on some long-time Columbi Blue Jackets (can you guess who they are?).

The Stick-less player is based on this Union soldier as a tribute to the young men who lost their lives defending freedom and the Union. The red circles with white outlines are references to the Ohio state flag, which is otherwise absent from the uniform.

The home and road uniforms are a basic mashup of of the BJs original unis and their current ones. My third is a solid blue uni with sleeve designs evoking military garb of the Civil War era.

Dallas Stars – Home | Road | Third – With the Stars, I tried to combine elements of the North Stars and the Dallas Stars. Many of the design elements of the jerseys can be traced back to North Stars uniforms. Black breezers solidify that black is still in the color pallet while the home features black outlined numbers and the road has “DALLAS” written in black.

Finally, the third jersey is black in homage to the current uni set and I return the Dallas script but remove the front uni number (which I hate) and replace it with the Dallas star logo.

Los Angeles Kings – Home | Road | Third – The home and road are pretty straight forward and the third is basically a fauxback to the earliest days of the Kings. The logo and crest, however, are edits of the great work of raysox over at CCSLC and his brilliant Yzermanize thread.

Minnesota Wild – Home | Road | Third – I keep the Wild as a primarily red team, with green remaining secondary. On the home jersey, I basically move the current chest crest to the shoulders for two reasons: To get rid of that ugly shoulder patch and because the circle Wild logo works much better there than replacing that great Wild crest.

While the road jersey is just a variation of the home uni, on the third jersey, I go back to the earliest days of the Wild and bring back a great looking green jersey that isn’t a third different striping template nor a silly fauxback.

Nashville Predators – Home | Road | Third – This set is basically just a replication and edit to my template of a Preds concept I did a while back. Both the crest and shoulder patch are different than their current real-world counterparts, but I think both are improved and the jersey are simplified and made better by a blue Third with a yellow lid.

New York Rangers – Home | Road | Third – The Rangers have some of the best unis in the NHL, plus great tradition to back them up. Once again, I don’t change much on the Home or Road unis, but I did make a few tweaks and I added a fauxback (read: added sleeve numbers and number outlines) to their original Stanley Cup winning team.

Ottawa Senators – Home | Road | Third – The Sens new ‘Heritage’ Third jersey is the best uni the current incarnation of the Senators has ever worn. That being said, I made that the template for all three unis – with some modifications and no vintage white.

First, I made all of the stripes equal length, the bottom red stripe on the ‘Heritage’ Third is a bit smaller than the others while the middle black stripe is bigger. Now, they’re all equal. Next I added stripes and a logo to the pants. That’s a strong logo, and I didn’t want to lose the French and English crests, so I added it to the pants and helmet.

Philadelphia Flyers – Home | Road | Third – Philly made a good move by going back to a more traditional design in recent years and while some people detest the conflicting-color nameplates, I love ’em. When I bring back a black third into the set, I keep the conflicting-color nameplate and make the helmet orange.

Pittsburgh Penguins – Home | Road | Third – Pittsburgh has great uni tradition in both gold and yellow, but Penguins are yellow, not gold, so I return the Pens to a more traditional set and more traditional color.

While I was tempted to go with a yellow alt, I decided to go with yet another throwback for the Pens. However, their last throwback was sub-par, so I choose to throwback to 1973-74, which is similar to the 70-71 throwbacks but doesn’t include the circle logo and is a little more blue and a little less powder (oh, and NNOB).

Saint Louis Blues – Home | Road | Third – The Blues need to give up the Bettman-induced charade. I give a more traditional, throwback look to the Blues.

Tampa Bay Lightning – Home | Road | Third – The home and road unis are ALMOST unchanged. I change the pants to black to assuage fan requests for more black and I also removed “Tampa Bay” wordmark from the road uni.

For the third jersey, I changed the torso color to black but maintained blue on the sleeves and hem. I added the victory stripes, again because the fans love them, onto the sleeves and I added the “Tampa Bay” wordmark onto the chest. finally, the socks are blue on top, unlike the sleeves, so that they clash better with the pants.

Washington Capitals – Home | Road | Third – Everybody loved the WC throwback so maybe a fauxback would be popular. Less stars, current socks and current logos and font.

Winnipeg Jets – Home | Road | Third – The newest team in the NHL got a pretty good look for year one, but I still believe their logo, crest and identity could be improved upon. Above, you can see my logo edits where I remove the maple leaf from both logos and drop the ultra-crappy wordmark in favor of a red jet that echoes the maple leaf on the original roundel, rather than imitate it.

While some have argued that the Jet on the pants looks like it’s crashing, I would argue that since the shorts end well above ice level, the expert pilot has plenty of time to pull out of this controlled dive maneuver and not harm himself. Also, it’s a design element and the plane isn’t real, get over it.

Winter Classic – Rangers vs. Flyers – OK, so I’m not the biggest vintage white fan in the world but I have reasons for doing this this time. First, with the Rangers, their WC logo is in vintage white, so I assume that their unis will be too. I used the colors from that logo but Washington, last year, proved that white white can look amazing with a nice red and blue.

For the Flyers explanation, it’s basically this: I wanted to make this uniform a throwback to the Flyers’ history, but there just isn’t much to go from, so the vintage white just contrasts with the regular uniform that much better.

Now both unis throwback to the earliest versions of both of these classic sweaters (though, the TV numbers on the Rangers are from the second iteration of their white uni) and both are NNOB.

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Thanks, Timmah!

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50 Years Ago…This Weekend

Back again with Rick Pearson who is here to bring us his look at the featured ABC television college football matchup from 50 years ago. As always, Rick documented the game via his “kid cards”. Here’s Rick to tell us about it.

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Nov. 4, 1961–Michigan State at Minnesota

ABC Game of the Week: Gophers won, 13-0…Yes, Minnesota once was a perennial Big Ten contender, won or shared national championships, and was deemed worthy of being only college game on TV this weekend…Home uni had been Gophers’ basic look since ’57 or so…HB Bill Munsey, older brother of Chuck Muncie of Chargers and Saints (different spellings correct)… As with Wisconsin last week, a single stripe on Gophers’ crew socks worn over stirrups…Spartans in their then-traditional unis…Sherman Lewis in the home set…Both teams in their cold-weather high socks…Not counting striped high crew socks such as Notre Dame’s in the Montana era, it’s been a while since a major college team had socks with stripes as a regular uni option…As to the players shown, Tom Hall played for three NFL teams, but had his best years as a Viking WR …Matt Snorton (certainly a last name maybe better suited to things a couple decades later), was drafted by Detroit and Denver, lasting only part of one season as a Bronco TE.

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Fantastic, as usual, Rick — thanks. Know what I liked best about this? The photo of Tom Hall & Bennie McRae — even 40+ years later, in black & white, you can instantly tell that’s the Vikes & Bears playing.

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Uni Tweaks

We have another new set of tweaks today.

If you have a tweak, change or concept for any sport, send them my way.

Remember, if possible, try to keep your descriptions to ~50 words (give or take) per tweak. You guys have been great at keeping to that, and it’s much appreciated!

And so, lets begin:

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We start with Jack Goodrich, who has a tweak for the KC Royals:

PHil,

I’d love to see the script logo outlined in gold and with the black drop shadow. (Admittedly, the look is borrowed from the Mets)
Also, add a gold stripe to the pants. The blue and white is just too little color for me. The Dodgers have the red numeral on front; that always looked better than the Royals home jerseys.
No changes to the road grays or alternates.

Thanks
So glad people care enough about sports uniforms to have the web site.

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Next up is Richard Paine, with the future(?) LA football franchise…:

Hey Phil,

Thanks for posting my late Seahawks tweaks. Instead of being late for the dance this time, I thought I would be super early. I know you mentioned the next contest possibly being the relocation of a team to LA. Well, I have an idea for a Los Angeles franchise and it has been brewing in my minds since the mid 90s. I would like to share the relocation and extinction of the Jacksonville Jaguars and introduce a new pro color scheme with the Los Angeles Knights.

All the Best,
Rich

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And we close today with Bruce Genther, who has a Husker tweak:

Phil:

The University of Nebraska football uniforms need a major tweak…so here is my recommendation for 2012.

Bruce A. Genther

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Thanks gentlemen. More to come tomorrow.

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Benchies

by Rick Pearson

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Everybody’s got an agenda…

And the full-size.

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That’s it for today folks. Enjoy the game of the century today. My heart says ‘bama but my *money* is on the LSU. GEAUX Tiggers!

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“Really? Oopsie. It’s much smaller when Phil runs it!” — Paul Lukas