Icethetics: Live From Dallas
The Icethetics TweetTracker
All times Central
If you want to follow everything going on in Raleigh and Dallas on this huge day, look no further. Icethetics is the only place you need to be. We've got the TweetTracker! In the box above, follow tweets all day long from myself along with the fine folks below.
Tracking the Carolina Hurricanes:
- @NHLCanes: Carolina Hurricanes, official
- @ice_chip: Chip Alexander, Raleigh News & Observer
- @dougwarf: Doug Warf, Hurricanes marketing department
- @CanesCountry: Canes Country, Hurricanes blog for SB Nation
Tracking the Dallas Stars:
- @DallasStars: Dallas Stars, official
- @MikeHeika: Mike Heika, Dallas Morning News
- @Jwalsh25: Jason Walsh, Stars broadcast producer
- @DefendingBigD: Defending Big D, Stars blog for SB Nation
If there are any other great tweeters in Raleigh or Dallas that I'm missing, let me know right away! Should be an exciting day!
Chris
Hope you guys enjoyed the TweetTracker yesterday. Turned out to be a pricey experiment. CoverItLive, which I last used back when it was a free service, now charges once you get past 100 views per month.
After spending a lot of money to keep it open during yesterday's festivities, it won't be accessible for the rest of the month since we obviously exceeded the current limits. But I'll leave the post online for posterity. You might choose to relive the day somewhere down the line.
Thanks for understanding. And boo to CoverItLive for ruining their neat service with excessive fees. More coming to the blog today as soon as I can make it happen.
Reader Comments (50)
This is terrific. I love how you've turned this into an event :)
Also for the Canes reveal follow: @MSmithCanes
It's the Carolina Canadians! Ha Ha. The reds look like Team Canada. I'm not sure why the only use of black is in the color and logo. I'm not a fan of the different white set that uses more black than the red jersey.
Hurricanes jersey's are very boring. Nothing new here, and if they were going for oldschool feel like they said, they did a poor job of it.
Don't have a twitter account so I'm commenting here. My first impression was "Why do they have to be different?" I guess the designers had a fauxback approach. Don't forget, only the Maple Leafs had matching unis during the Original Six era and many other teams afterward had mismatching uniforms (Sabres, Flames, Whalers, North Stars, Islanders and Blues). Imagine if the Hurricanes existed 50-70 ago and they wore these unis. The reaction would be overwhelmingly positive. But putting imaginary history aside, I give these uniforms a thumbs up. Clean and a good hockey look.
The white, especially the shoulder from the front looks too similar to Canadiens,
Overall, this is a downgrade. Retro has been overdone.
Crest too small and too high. Sleeve numbers too high.
Hate the name in the shoulder yoke on the home. Would be better with a regular yoke. Indifferent on the square off end of the yoke.
Need the storm flag somewhere, even if just on the pants.
Red jersey needs more black. Maybe just a pinstripe on either side of the red in the middle of the white double stripe.
Don't mind that the sets are not mirror images. My Habs have been doing it for almost a century.
really not a fan of the red jersey, which is WAY too red, white one is ok i guess. and can someone please tell me why teams think its a good idea to use different design templates for home / road jerseys??
got to say this is a let down. the Canes really missed a chance to make there unis great
I'm a Hurricanes season ticket holder. I like the design of the road jerseys. However, I wish they would have incorporated black into the stripes on the home jersey-I think it looks too plain. It also looks unbalanced since black is in the collar and logo.
Wow. The 'Canes new look is garbage. I mean really, really bad #$%&*.
No originality! Neither jersey matches the other and they look like badly done rip-offs of other teams. I'm seeing Coyotes, Red Wings and Maple Leafs all thrown together in the red uniform, and the white looks like a Canadians and Devils mish-mash. The lack of black and especially grey/silver really hurts the Hurricanes. Black and grey really helped this team establish its own identity. Not to mention the lack of tropical storm flags, which were awesome.
All in all, I hope this look is eliminated as soon as possible. I am not looking forward to seeing them in this junk next season.
To all Hurricane fans, my condolences. I know what it's like to watch your team play in awful uniforms.
The new crest is cool and the new typeface is fine, but not feeling the inconsistant use of colors between the two sweaters. Arguably the second most important color to the team identity, black is all but non-existant on the home unis. It makes the black on the road striping look like it doesn't belong. Either way though it doesn't matter much because the new designs just make the Canes look generic and more like all the other teams in the Eastern Conference.
Ugh, what a disappointment. The Hurricanes jersey just went to excellent to just plain typical. It is a straightforward downgrade from their original identity, it makes me sigh that this is going to be the face of the Hurricanes for probably at least a few seasons or so, or heck, maybe even longer. It's not, well, terrible as, say, the Buffaslug, but in all honestly, this just screams modern laziness.
It's basically a combination of the Red Wings, Maple Leafs, and Canadiens jersey. Just, ridiculous. There isn't even a shoulder logo, which makes it all the more bland. They were trying for a classic look, but that just does not work with the Carolina Hurricanes identity. I just can't believe these are the new sweaters the team's going to wear for a good while. I sincerely hope Dallas isn't a disappointment like this one was.
The 15% smaller crest looks like crap. It's not proportioned right to the rest of the uniform. It looks like they put a replica crest on an authentic jersey. The black on the white jersey doesn't look right either since they don't have any on the red jersey. Overall I think these jerseys are terrible. A HUGE step down from what they had.
The Canes developed these jerseys for 2 years and came up with...Team Canada jerseys?!! So the creative team basically did nothing for 2 years and when it came time to present they just copied and pasted images of the Canadian hockey jerseys from 2002 and 2010. "This is what we came up with! Genius, right?!" I guess Eric Stall will feel comfortable in these!
You gotta love team marketing buzz. It's not a "classic uniform" for Carolina. It's team Canada's classic uniform and they've misappropriated it.
I really wish there was some body within the NHL that could veto garbage like this and the Tampa Bay Lightning Maple Leafs' ripoff. Isn't the purpose of branding to forge your own identity? I don't care how often they rebrand a team or how ugly a look is but it really rubs me the wrong way when a team steals the brand of another.
Get your own identity Carolina. Leave team Canada's alone.
Totally agree with NASCARFAN160. Boring and no identity. At the very least the previous jersey had an identity with the team and region regardless if you liked it or not. Now, you could swap out the logo with another team and one would not know the difference. You could place Team Canada's logo on it now -- big marketing failure.
I don't really have a huge problem with the away jerseys, but I think the home jerseys need to have black in the stripes. The fact that the collar and logo have black in them makes the top and the bottom of the home jersey unbalanced.
Can someone do a concept with sleeves on the red jersey that mimic the pattern on the white jersey?
@ EL - Well said!!! I don't think I could have said it any better.
Agree with the overall sentiment here I loved the old jerseys and didn't understand why they were changing them. Now I love classic simple jerseys but something just seems off with these and I too don't like the lack of the hurricane warning flags. Bring back the old!
So Carolina's home jersey is basically a rip-off of Team Canada and the road jersey is a rip-off of the Cleveland Barons.
Re: EL -
Tampa Bay didn't rip off Toronto. They ripped off Detroit :) Or a little bit of both. Colors from Toronto, design from Detroit.
Literally, before they added the black to certain areas, it was a direct ripoff of Detroit. Take a Detroit uniform and tweak the color levels until you have blue. Done.
I'm not a huge fan of the Hurricanes. I liked the silver/gray accents and it appears that is all they did was remove them. I was hoping they would have promoted them, since no other team uses a Gray/Blk/Red palate in the NHL. It usually comes out very nice.
The Stars website has already been updated! http://stars.nhl.com/
Home: All green jersey
Road: Green Shoulder
The jersey kinda looks a lot like the black hawks st Patrick's day threads
So I know that you got an invite to Dallas which is a HUGE step for this site, but you were also upset about missing the Carolina reveal at the same time.
Well judging by both jerseys, you didn't miss much. Carolina's looks like Detroit and Phoenix had a love-child and out popped this crap, with Dallas getting the leftover green puke on the EXACT SAME JERSEY. What a disappointment all the way around.
For a sport trying to grow into the future, they can't get their uniforms out of the past. I think Tool said it best...."F**k retro ANYTHING!" It's almost like their clubs are taking a WNBA approach and making all the teams wear the same uniform, just changing the color and the font....complete garbage.
Dallas went from having the worst jerseys in the NHL up to about 4th or 5th worst jerseys in the NHL. It is better than the new Carolina jerseys though. The white jersey just looks cheap.
Both Carolina's and Dallas' are uninspired retreads of seventy-year-old hockey sweater design. Dallas' are at least a nice green, and they ARE an improvement, which is a scathing indictment of their previous look. Carolina's is an unquestionable downgrade.
I appreciate when teams try something new (even if its a trip to the vintage department), but you gotta be unique especially if you're a younger organization. Some minor tweaks to Carolina's existing unis would have been much better. The past jerseys' use of silver, original striping, and warning flags were really cool and unique stylings for Carolina so if you started to think that the flags looked too bold or gawdy than why not put them in one of the smaller bands of the striping and/or on the visible side of the collar where you can actually see them??? Just don't get where all the research and development went into the NewStorm duds.
Sorry Hurricanes execs, but these new red, white (and black) sweaters are not different and classy. New Jersey established themselves as the east's timeless red, white and black jersey 20+ years ago. The Blackhawks also have one of the best red/white/black brands of all time.
On the flip side, Dallas' new identity is a big step up. Looks like they did the right thing (fan outreach) and gave everyone what they want which is a green dominant jersey and a uniquely stars style. I was one who thought the Stars had to have gold in their brand, but reading the explanation and seeing the jerseys sold me. Colors, logo and jersey stylings get two thumbs up.
Nice job covering this! Making these unveilings an event is cool.
After looking at both teams' jerseys, I gotta say I'm a little underwhelmed. I say let older teams have the traditional look. Dallas could use more shiny silver and darker colors to go with their modern looking logos. Same with Carolina: I wish the home had more black or silver and I wish both had the flags so you could at least see them. Seems kinda like Winnipeg where they try to be too slick and subtle, and lose some personality.
Both teams definitely upgraded. Dallas was too plain Jane and Carolina had that annoying shoulder stripe. Grades are C for both. Now, I wish my Avs would do something about their uniprons. I like our blueberries; they could be our aways with a color swap, and also would like a more prominent mountain design on the shoulder like we used to have for homes.
The canes sweater ehh. Could have balanced the colors better. The stars got it right. Nice balance. Look very sharp. Glad to see a logo again. No longer look like practice shirts. Stars no longer the worst uni in NHL
I like the Stars's new look more with each view of them. It's something that will be unique to them and is something that I think will hold up to the test of time.
Dallas' new crest and uniform is one of the worst redesigns I've seen in the history of pro sports.
Stars stole the Blackhawks home uni design. Only difference is one black stripe on the bottom. Collar is even the same (except for laces). Glad the white didn't rip off Chicago. Not a bad look, I think they look pretty nice.. Just wish they made their home unis more "their own". And the Canes.... Wow. Painfully bad.
Hey Carolina! Did you see the Stars new jerseys? This is how you create an identity. Not by stealing it from hockey's most storied national team's identity. Try to creat something of your own. I saw the video of Stall walking into the dressing room to show all the other Canes players...the look on some of their faces was priceless! Like, "Uhm isn't that Team Canada's jersey?" LOL. It's like, "We can't wear that...I can't wear a Canada jersey if I didn't make the team!" or, "I'm not Canadian!". Can't believe the NHL even allowed this! IT'S A RIP OFF! Stars jerseys are rad!
It's a little bland, but classy. The problem is, they could have made it amazing with a single change to each uniform. On the home uniform, widen the space between the white bands at the waist, and in between them, put the repeating storm flag pattern. On the roads, the space between the thin black bars is already wide enough, so just plug in the storm flag pattern where the red stripe currently is. Bam, just as classy, but with one more highly distinctive pattern to distinguish the team.
Euh! I am waiting to see the ice-effect that the jersey are going to produce but I definitely don't like the logo.
HurriCANADIENS: I agree with the majority on this one. Seriously, they could have done SO MUCH MORE with this sweater and still retain their desire of wanting a "Classic" look. They neither hurt, nor helped their cause in obtaining a fresh look. These sweaters are boring as crap, and not that well designed. They should have simply gone back to the closest representation of the 1997-2007 look that they could with the limitations of the RBK 2.0. I actually LIKED that sweater. The Edge piping and faux yoke n all that junk that they put on the recent sweaters were an eyesore.
D-Stars: You know, I am actually a fan of these sweaters. They throw in the best elements of the past few years' of North Dakota Fighting Sioux jerseys (or, as we MN Gophers fans teasingly call 'em, the "Whioux" now that they have complied with the NCAA Bastards who forced them to be Politically Correct). The Kelly/Emerald/"Victory" Green that they are sporting is an AWESOME color to bring back to the NHL, and the D-Star logo is not the worst thing I've seen on an NHL sweater. I mean, seriously, an Orca? A hockey skate designed by the drugged-out 'tards who made every Judas Priest album cover? Putting an undersized "Ducks" wordmark on a sweater? Every Columbus Blue Jackets sweater ever designed? That eyesore of an Islanders third? There are way too many hideous sweaters for us to be complaining about this perfectly acceptable set. Is it a bottom-of-the-ninth walkoff grand slam? Heck no. But it's definitely a go-ahead stand-up double in the top of the eighth. Apologies in advance to anyone who gets their knickers in a twist over the mixed-sports metaphor.
I would put these sweaters in the top 50 percentile of NHL sets. Maybe not top 10, but definitely top 15.
Getting really tired of the lace-up collars...
Now, other than that, Dallas is fine. But Carolina... I could live with the road jersey if it had the hurricane flag patch on the shoulders and a dash of grey, but the home jersey is just awful. Needs to go back to the drawing board.
Underwelming to say the least. Agree with Carolina fans....old jerseys had som unqiue features with the black on the colored....now a combo of Team and Red/Coyote...
Dallas was supposed to be classic -- BS....looks like a AHL jersey. Green is fine...but better off keeping the gold as prominet color of the Star. I was hoping for an old west Star badge -- simple/clean...classic.
Glad I'm not a Dallas or Carolina fan....such boring choices and you know they will be stuck with this stuff for years now
OK the Stars jerseys are much better, but they are not perfect. I would have kept a tiny amount of gold in the logo set to maintain continuity with the Stars brand and set them apart. A two colour scheme with silver is very generic. I also would have changed the home uniform stripes slightly because it looks too much like Chicago's uniform. Otherwise it's a pretty good set.
Some people will always be opposed to change and those are often the loudest talkers. The new stars jersey I think is a hit. Everytime I look at it I like it more and more especially the logo. I think it captures the stars really well while being true to a traditional simple hockey look. It almost reminds me of nj or the webbed D which I think are tremendous logos. As far as Carolina goes they could have used the silver and black more in their striping and still kept it classic and simple. I feel like its a miss especially the home jersey. The road one I really like I think it's wonderful.
It slays me that both organizations report a lengthy design process and hundreds of iterations, yet somehow they BOTH end up using the Team Canada template (three equal stripes on the sleeves, shoulder yoke on the road jersey - the only deviation being the Cane road sleeve stripes, which are a lift of the stripes from the Florida Panther road uni). Both sets are definitely cleaner, albeit surprisingly simple.
I do like the new Dallas jerseys and logo. Much more distinctive than the utterly boring black/white/wordmark set they were stuck with the last few seasons.
I'd give the Canes a 7/10. It does seem uninspired and not very distinct to Carolina in any way. Lacks character, and that's key for an identity if you're not a team relying on history. Especially since history is the greatest way to build character naturally. The home jersey needs a little more black. I really think a design with an all-white version of the storm flags across the bottom would've looked great, and perhaps a single black stripe below border the jersey and the pants. You get the sense the team may be wondering if they made the right move at this point. I sense a minor tweak before the season like Tampa did with their new jerseys.
The Stars got it right, on the other hand. I'd say solid 8.5/10. That green is nothing short of spectacular. The logo looks 100 times better on the jersey itself than on a computer screen. The name and number font is unique enough to be Dallas' and no one else's. My only worry is that the patterns and arrangements are too similar to those of Chicago. No denying they'll look wonderful on the ice though. Congrats, Stars fans!
Just want to say thanks for going to Dallas and doing a great job reporting the event. I had more fun and anticipation with the Dallas reveal than I have at some of the movies I have seen lately! (Im looking at you After Earth) Anyway keep up the good work and thanks for taking us inside an event that I know I will never get to see in person. Also it looked like 10 people were at the Hurricanes reveal and it looked like a packed house at the Stars reveal. I think Dallas did a better job making it an event not to mention they revealed a far superior uniform. That green will really pop on the ice.
forgot to say last night, thankyou very much for the excellent coverage of the dallas event, hope you get to do more of this sort of thing in the future. one question about the dallas jerseys, when do they go on sale?? i may just have to get both home and road!!
The Dallas Fighting Sioux anyone?
http://binaryapi.ap.org/21bd110b4dc240c593f6ee65771cd353/512x.jpg
It's an upgrade but they straight up ripped off the colors and uniform design from UND
Thanks for the coverage. I can't believe CoverItLive has gone so drastic pricey on their business model. You might want to look into doing Twitter groups, there's quite a few out that allow you to tie multiple Twitter accounts to one stream.
Carolina's red jersey needs black shorts and the warning flag waist striping. The white jersey needs warning flag waist striping (keep the red shorts). Both jerseys need to either enlarge and/or lower the crest AND lower the sleeve numbers a couple inches.
Dallas's look isn't as great as some of the concepts that have been posted here, but I like it overall. The green is a nice shade and I really like the white jersey. Hopefully in a couple years they add a black alternate with the old-style neck-to-wrist shoulder striping like their old, old uniforms had (like one or two of the concepts posted here) as an alternate.
The Hurricanes failed miserably, in my opinion, but the Stars did pretty well - especially given the previous jersey sets.
Kudos to Jim's post that's spot on. Both of these are underwelming. Carolina's is simply bad (especially the home). Dallas might as well have let U of North Dakota make the jerseys -- the school might have developed a more creative design. Sure, it's better than the rubbish they've worn the past few seasons, but pretty uninspiring, both sweater and logos. And while I could take or leave the silver, I had to laugh at Tom Gaglardi's comment about the trouble with gold looking like brown. REALLY?!?! Was his design firm that inept? Apparently the NFL and Notre Dame don't have too much of an issue with gold, or yellow for that matter. Dallas' AHL affiliate has nicer sweaters. We should all pray that this won't be a trend for some of the changes coming up for next season.