Islanders Unveil Third Jersey!
38 Comments
The New York Islanders have officially unveiled their new third jersey for the 2008-09 season. It's the classic throwback from the 1970s featuring royal blue and orange.
A major improvement over the new EDGE jerseys they introduced last year.
Here you can see Bill Guerin modeling the new uniform — and we now see what the Isles meant by new "uniform." The last time they had a third jersey, the rest of the uniform remained the same.
Overall, it's a great look. It surprises me that more jerseys, like some of the throwback thirds that have been unveiled, weren't introduced as the primary jerseys last year when Reebok took over.
On their web site, the Islanders have a cool 360-degree view of Guerin in the new uniform. What's interesting is the way the horizontal stripes around the socks seem to be broken at the calf.
You can see a picture of what I'm talking about below.
This third jersey will make its game debut on Saturday when the Isles face the Montreal Canadiens for "Throwback Night." I'll be sure to grab some pictures from the game.
One more shot of Guerin in the new sweater.
Group photo! Bobby Nystrom, Josh Bailey, Mike Sillinger and Clark Gillies model the new sweater below.
Having not seen any high resolution images of the jersey, something I hadn't realized was the extra lines around the stick signifying the number of Stanley Cup championships.
"I think the new jerseys are fantastic," said Bob Nystrom, a member of the original 1972 Islanders squad. "The colors really bring me back to our early teams. I think the fans are really going to buy into the jerseys because anybody who saw the team when we played, will appreciate the original colors. Plus, I like the subtle change the made to add another strip to the stick, signifying the four Cups."
And if you want to watch the actual unveiling during the Islanders Business Club event today, here's the video.
So there it is. What do you think of the new uniform?
Reader Comments (38)
The socks are the only apparent flaw here, but they could fix them easily
I may be in a minority, but I like their current jerseys, and I think these will complement them very well.
love it, love it, love it... love that the orange stripe is back on the pants...
now if we could only get a team to go with the new "old" digs...
As an Islander fan I am very impressed. I think they look great! I agree with Chris. They should have made these their full time jerseys last year. I hope that they will become the regular jerseys at some point in the near future. They can definitely make a white one that will look just as good. Awesome job to the Islanders!
Finally the true Islanders spirit is back. They should bring the whit version back as well, they jerseys they used when I grew up. If theres anything the Islanders have done right this year, its bringing back the classic look.
Garbage
Quite impressive, especially the 360 view!
9.75/10!
-.25 for the socks.
These are pretty close to being great uniforms... but there's something a little bit off. It might just be the socks.
I love the Islanders' new look. Even though I was hoping they would go with the sweater they had during their dynasty years, this is a classic look. I lived in New York City during the Isles dynasty and when they swept my Canucks in the '82 Final. The Islanders may play on Long Island, but they are really NYC's "second" team, as Nassau County is just outside of Queens. The royal blue and orange simply have a NYC feel to it. If the Canucks and the Islanders were to ever meet again in the finals, I would love to see the Islanders wear this uniform while the Canucks wear their leaked third sweater as the full-time sweater. The blue and orange vs the blue and green.
While I can see the appeal of paying tribute to the glory days of the Isles, I've never been a fan of their designs.
I actually like their current jerseys but this is a nice throwback.
Why can't Reebok just complete their lines all the way around? The socks look dumb much like the Oilers arm bands.
Wow, those tiny little tic marks really "completely" change the jersey don't they?!? Why didn't they just say they were gonna wear something from the 70s?
I want something new from them. They can use their throwback jerseys when they get as good as they used to be when they originally wore them. I like their current jerseys, but I wish they made a new lighthouse logo. I never liked their logo at all it looks like a smilie face with long island as a mustache, NY for the eyes, and ISLANDERS for the teeth lol. That's what I always thought it was when I was a kid and I liked the fisherman logo then too, but now I like their old lighthouse patch.
Chris, Do you think you could post a "before and after" of the regular isles jersey and the new alternate? (If not, do you know a website that might have this?) I don't really see the difference.. but then again, I'm from CA and don't follow what goes on in the East and I'm not familiar with the unis out there.
These jersey's and uniform suck. There present jersey's are much better. These look dated already. A oranger jersey would have been better. If your going to make a alternate jersey, make it a different primary color than your regular jersey's. What's the point of having another blue jersey? Dumb. All I have to say is the NHL has so much potenial to market itself with these jersey's and they seem to allways seem to dissapoint. Very few are really worth anything. They should come up with like 3 totally different designs and let the fans vote online and then you would get a better result. Like Vancouver's "new" third jersey, if the Leaked one featured on here is "The One". What is the point? they already had a third jersey like that two years ago. People are not going to buy this jersey when they have that one. Dumb again.
The Islanders may play on Long Island, but they are really NYC's "second" team, as Nassau County is just outside of Queens.
When I went to NYC, it was in August, not during hockey season. But I always believed that the Rangers were New York's first team, and the Devils were the second team, since New Jersey just across the river. But right now, the Islanders are struggling, while the Rangers, Devils, and even the Sabres in Western New York are all making the playoffs consistently, so it's hard to be an Islanders fan in NYC, especially with the Rangers' great start the focus of the city's sports obsession (except for the NY Giants).
Anyway, the jerseys look absolutely amazing. I've never been a fan of the two large stripes at the bottom, very similar to the Bruins' old pre-Rbk jerseys, but it just seems to work here. It's nice whenever I see a throwback in the Rbk Edge era because it feels like they are being allowed to have that classic feel that we all want.
Of course, the only negative of the uniform is the socks' striping a la Panthers/Oilers. But when I'm watching the game, I'll be looking at their jerseys, not their socks, so that's something I could easily ignore.
These uniforms are going to look positively sharp on the ice, and it wouldn't surprise me if they went to this look full-time in a couple years. In fact, I'm hoping they do; the shoulder piping on the current jersey is a big ??
Sorry but this is just plain gross. The goal to design is to move forward, this is just a pure throwback to a horrible time in the design world.... the 1970s. The current style is so much cleaner and exciting than this reject from the disco era.
Do you hear that???? I think I hear Saturday Night Fever playing in the background of the 360º.
Its the pants that are a different blue, it looks off. It really looks like nothing goes together on the jersey. And that sock design is awful
Doug, you're insane.
the current "era" of design is nothing more than a cash grab by RBKrap. hockey sweaters are something near and dear to the hearts of true die hard hockey fans.
Can you imagine the Canadiens wearing anything but the bleu, blanc, et rouge that they've worn for 90 years? With all of the pre-NHL jerseys being sported by the habs this year, it'll be scary enough.
my own Pittsburgh Penguins are one of the worse offenders against that tradition. their jersey is the same as ottawa's in everything but colors and logos. both are terrible-football-jersey-washouts that should never take the ice.
no, hockeys fans are the most loyal in the world, a true breed apart, separate from all of the fair-weather fans that we scoff at as they watch their slow and clumsy sports. The jerseys worn by the players, not called "jerseys" out of tradition but "sweaters" though they have not been wool in decades...they reflect that unique hockey outlook. We are different than other fans, watching a sport different than the norm, sporting a look different than the norm.
so as the rest of sport transforms itself to look like the uberpopular NFL, let hockey stand apart, with its own identity, forged in a history second only to baseball. let hockey have its heritage.
These should be their primary home jerseys... The Islanders current home and away jerseys suck...
I really don't have much to say. It's pretty much what I was expecting, and the only problems I see are the pants and the thick white line at the bottom of the jersey touching both the slightly darker and lighter blues. I just think the white is too over-powering for a home jersey.
About the socks, who really cares? It could've been worse. They just simply took out a section of the lines. It wasn't really necessary or unnecessary. I do, however, like the thicker white line around the logo. It separates itself from the rest of the logo when you're looking square at it.
First time poster on here, so i just wanna say I love this site, Chris you rock big time my friend. Massachusetts loves ya. Anyway as far as the Isles new digs. I gotta say for all the build up I was a little surprised at what they unvieled. I get the whole throwback trend in the NHL, and very often i love it. I just think with this whole exciting 3rd jersey return, we're seeing too many things that show a real lack of interest on the part of the teams and designers. At this point my favorite new looks are the Thrashers and Bruins, and yes i'm a Bruin fan, but i genuinly love the new uni's. In fact when that secondary logo was put on the shoulders for the first time i said i hope that logo gets top billing on a new jersey soon. And yes, I realize the Bruins new logo is also a throwback to a logo they once used, but it's been altered enough to be considered new in my opinion.
I agree with Hockey Week. Lifelong Pens fan(live in Pgh). I was sooo happy when Mario Lemieux changed the Pens logo back to the skating penguin logo(I HATE the Howard Baldwin "PIGEON" logo). I liked the uniform that he brought it back on, however I was not thrilled with the change from yellow gold(shared by all Pgh pro teams) to LAS VEGAS gold. Now RBK has these ultra tight football wannabe uniforms and they SUCK. The Pens uniform is a cookie cutter, just like the Senators,Lightning,etc...complete crap!! The Pens are blk and gold not black and beige(rbks gold is to much like beige)IMO I can't wait til the RBK contract ends. Bring back the CCM box cut jerseys.
so who was wearing the rangers jersey?
Am I the only one that thinks it looks like he's wearing a too small orange and blue Islanders t-shirt over a looser white long-sleeve shirt?
I like some of it, kinda classic looking, but there's something about it that I just don't care for.
Arrowcat, you are aware that CCM and RBK are the same company right? And that Teams didn't have to go with a template design and could have done most anything within bounds -the Dallas star design was out and the pens bottom corners wouldn't work with the new hem wouldn't work- but many teams didn't.
I've said it before and I'll say it again- it's not RBK's fault if your team f*cks up the design.
cptjeff,
WRONG!
an article was published sometime in early october last year about how RBK told the Rochester Americans to remove the stripes from the hemlines of their jerseys, even though the team didn't want to. The team listened to RBK. If anyone can find it, please let me know, but i think it's been long removed.
i DID find a comment from october 13 on NHLToL, saying this:
Charlie said...
I realize it will be a long haul but I don't want people to forget that RBK popped their cherry with the Sabres and Ducks redesign and sent this whole uniform system debacle into motion.
We have the Rochester Amerks team president quoting that RBK wished to phase out horizontal stripes and most of the aesthetics except the logo was NOT done by the suggestion of the team.
October 13, 2007 12:18 PM
the second paragraph is the major thing in that. you may want to wish that teams had an option, but only the teams who downright refused to go along (original 6...and that's about it) had their jerseys changed by RBK.
I like this almost dead-on vintage jersey for many reasons.
-Nice striping: We don't see many similar striping patterns like this these days
-Classic look and feel I swear, you could go back in time and no one would know they were different from a far distance. It's like they took a set of old jerseys made in the 70s out of a closet and wore them.
-Improvement: Compared to what they have now this looks like the perfect jersey. now if they could make their current look more like this...Oh and the extra stick stripe is a nice touch too kind of like the Todd McFarlane Oilers Third.
Overall: 4.5/5
Ugh, I was hoping not for a throwback. I'm sick of every third jersey being a throwback. Rbk has destroyed my sport and my team. I bet Guerin had to hold his breath to fit into that stupid thing.
Why can't they have third jerseys and throwbacks?
Do all new thirds need to be throwbacks or wordmarks? Very few exceptions make this annoying.
I can't stand the RBK takeover. Jerseys are still way too tight, and it has to be another throwback or wordmark instead of something new and creative.
Looks really good overall. The socks are really stupid, though. Why do that? What purpose does that serve?
looks crappy, but didnt care for the original too much either. loved the updated version, pre-Reebok
that said, like what RBK is doing lately. these throwbacks and 3rds are fixing the mistakes the teams made (NOT REEBOK) when designing their jerseys.
Not bad at all. The socks are stupid, what is it with new technology meaning that the wheel. When Nike went to the Swift jerseys in international hockey the changed many of the socks to a vertical stripe. Overall the Isle did a good job (not black).
I like the look. Brings back fond memories of those jerseys in the early 70's getting pulverized by my Atlanta Flames. The sock thing is silly, but can be overlooked. I am sure the players will order larger and more roomy jerseys than this skin tight one they have Guerin wearing. As as for the "off color pants" - they are a different fabric and are always a bit off.
I was never a big fan of the Islanders uniforms back in the day (i.e., before the fisherman), and I still don't really like them. But their fans seemed to really want the old jerseys back, so I certainly don't blame the team for catering to its fan base.
I know I'm in a huge minority here, but my favorite Isles uniform was the one from the late '90s with the colorful wavy stripes and the classic "NY" logo. (I agree that the fisherman logo was stupid, but I always liked the rest of the uniform design.)
Thank You Captjeff, I woulda never have known that had you not told me, Golly Gee Whiz! I know that in the Gretzky Oilers days, Nike was the supplier for there jersey's. Maska also did a few jersey's. Cooper did the Penguins in the early 80s. CCM/Maska did pretty much all of the team's in the late 80s - 90s. Nike bought Bauer a few years ago and is now selling the Bauer division due to poor sales! I hate the Ultra tight, football wannabe, poor quality of the RBK jeresy's. My CCM Lemieux Replica from 1992 has sewn on lettering. The current RBK replicas have iron on lettering that are made to look sewn on(fake stitches)??????? The RBK edge is nothing more than a long sleeve football jersey!
Good Lord. Your team has the option to follow their suggestions. All I've heard is RBK *SUGGESTED* stuff. Good or bad, the team ultimately agreed. Get over it. It's the teams more than anything, especially since the *teams* as a whole elected to go with the RBK jerseys.
It still looks like hockey on the ice.
If RBK really has that much power over what jerseys look like, then why is there so much diversity in designs from team to team?
Go to NHLUniforms.com and pull up the 1990-91 season, and I think you'll notice that jersey designs were way more standardized back then than they are now.
bring back the fisherman, best isles uniform ever!!!
i agree the rbk jerseys suck but no point complaining about them there here for at least this year and probably next season too
and correct me if i'm wrong, everyone loves seeing what the new jerseys look like so the nhl did something right getting peoples interest with new jerseys, i mean look at the pro football (soccer) teams in europe they get new kits (jerseys) every year and its a big deal waiting for them to be relesed as much of a cash grab as it is people like the hype