Panthers, Ducks Plan Throwbacks

They're not even of legal drinking age and they're already getting nostalgic. Two teams will commemorate their 20th NHL seasons this fall. Let's talk about how.

When the NHL schedule was announced this past week, the Florida Panthers used the opportunity to announce their plans for the year as they mark their 20th anniversary. The Cats open their season on the road, but when they return home on Oct. 11, they'll have what they're calling a "Throwback Night" — though it's not entirely clear what that means.

Instantly, jersey geeks like us have been conditioned to immediately assume we're getting a throwback jersey. I could see that. Those triangular shoulder yokes don't get used anymore in the Age of Reebok, and that's sad. But the Panthers haven't said anything about a special jersey.

In fact, they haven't really said anything yet. From the press release:

The Cats took on the Penguins in their first regular season game in South Florida on Oct. 12, 1993, nearly 20-years to the date. The night will be a “throwback” night with details on all of the Opening Night festivities to be announced in the coming weeks.

So we'll keep an eye on things over the coming weeks.

Then there's the Anaheim Ducks. They also used the the schedule release to talk about their 20th anniversary plans. And it sounds like the old Disney Duck could be making an appearance. 

Icethetics reader and Ducks season ticket holder Andrew Heidecker emailed me excitedly last week to share some details.

I am a season ticket holder for the Anaheim Ducks. During their select-a-seat promotion, they had all the high-ups of the Ducks organization there. I spoke with one of them and he informed me that the Ducks will become Mighty once more during a game in October.

They will revive the 1993 [inaugural] jersey (he was not sure if it would be eggplant or white since home was light colors back then) but he did say that it will be set to the new Reebok Edge jersey and will be available for sale all season long in the Ducks team store.

Currently, the jersey is set to be worn for only one game early in October, but that can be altered to more than one game. Not to sound antsy, but the way he said it, it sounded like there may be more than one "MIGHTY" jersey being produced for wear this season.

If I find anything else out, I'll let you know!

If true, that's exciting news for fans of the old Mighty Ducks brand. We'll keep our fingers crossed.

It's worth noting that the Ducks' own press release fits in line with this report. 

As part of the 20th anniversary celebrations, the 2013-14 regular season will include a number of special events at Honda Center. Planned occasions will include look backs at great moments in Ducks history and retro merchandise available for purchase.

In addition, the club will host a “Throwback Night” near the start of the 2013-14 regular season, paying homage to the inaugural 1993-94 Mighty Ducks of Anaheim season. The club will have further announcements surrounding the festivities at a later date.

That "further announcements at a later date" line again. Heard it before.

Anyway, it sounds promising. And for what it's worth, the Ducks could get double-use out of such a throwback jersey. Don't forget that they play the Kings outdoors on Jan. 25, 2014. That'll probably involve a throwback jersey of some kind just as every other outdoor NHL game has in the past six years.

So what do you guys think? Is 20 too soon for throwbacks? Or are you nostalgic enough to take a throwback in any form at any time? Hockey does love its traditions after all.

Panthers Mark 20th Anniversary

The Florida Panthers unveiled their 20th anniversary logo today. You can read about how the team plans to celebrate the end of their second decade on their website. Presumably, the logo will be worn as a special patch on the jerseys next season.

By the way, 2013 also marks 20 years of the Anaheim Ducks. So it probably won't be long before we see an anniversary logo from them as well.

Weekend Odds & Ends

Brighten your Monday with these uniform musings from the second weekend of the NHL season.

The Tampa Bay Lightning have updated their third jersey and officially retired their old logo. The Bolts hit the ice on Friday night in the alternate sweaters which now feature their new primary logo on the shoulders. And because they're celebrating their 20th anniversary this season, that patch has been added as well.

Speaking of new jersey patches, the San Jose Sharks debuted the memorial logo that honors the team's original owner, George Gund III. The only problem is that the Sharks' uniforms are already pretty cluttered, so there's not a whole lot of room for an extra patch. It's worse for the captains and alternate captains, as you can see with Joe Thornton's jersey.

Nominations for the best-looking hockey games of EVER. I know which one Don Cherry is voting for.

No, the St. Louis Blues weren't that excited about the arrival of new teammate Wade Redden on Sunday night. The players all wore No. 6 jerseys during warm-ups to honor St. Louis sports legend Stan Musial. Unfortunately, numbers had to be added to the front of the jerseys to identify the players. Something we never want to see again.

While we're on the subject of unique warm-up jerseys, Icethetics reader Alec Dominguez wrote in to let us know that the Florida Panthers have been wearing "7th man" nameplates recently.

This photo of Alex Kovalev was taken prior to Thursday night's game against the Senators.

Each player wears his own number. It's just the nameplate that's there to honor the patient fans who endured three months of idiocy in the form of the NHL's fourth lockout in two decades.

Hey, bright side. At least they acknowledge they're trying our patience. I figured they would just ignore it.

By the way, if you've noticed any uniform changes or unique warm-up sweaters I've managed to overlook, please drop me a line. I'll either update this blog post or start a new one.

And finally...

This is one of the weirdest things I've seen so far this season. On their website splash page, the New York Islanders are promoting their game on Super Bowl Sunday with a football helmet featuring their logo. It's just wrong. Flat out wrong.

Update on Tuesday · Jan 29 · 2013 | 9:51 AM PST by Chris

This isn't from the weekend, but it's in the same vein as the Panthers' story above. On opening night, Jan. 21, the Columbus Blue Jackets came out for warm-ups all wearing the same jersey. It was No. 1 with "THANK YOU FANS" across the back. See? They still like our money us.

But I kid. These jerseys were actually pretty cool, a nice gesture from the team. And during the game, the jerseys were raffled off to fans.

Thanks to Dan Caron for the tweet tip. Find more photos on the team's website.

2013 NHL Season Preview

After a disappointing and annoyingly long delay, the new NHL season finally commences on Saturday night. So now would be as good a time as any for the Icethetics Season Preview.

Over the summer, we talked about what a boring year 2012-13 would be for uniform changes — with almost nothing new on the docket. Turns out the higher-ups may have done this on purpose considering how close we came to not having a season at all. But here we are. Let's take a look at what little will be changing for this shortened campaign.

What's In This Season?

Our last JerseyWatch 2012 update came in late August. And what were we most excited about? The Detroit Red Wings and Toronto Maple Leafs at the 2013 NHL Winter Classic in Ann Arbor, of course! Those outdoor games always bring awesome new retro-inspired sweaters. But then the NHL went and canceled the whole thing.

How about the 2013 NHL All-Star Game in Columbus? Those All-Star sweaters are starting to go a bit stale after two years. Maybe we'd be treated to a brand new set? Nope. That was canceled too.

That just leaves the Tampa Bay Lightning, who are expected to bring their third jersey up to date with new shoulder patches. After introducing their new logos and uniforms last season, the club ran out of time to address the outdated features of the alternate. According to Raw Charge, the team says that will be addressed this year.

In theory, it'll look a little something like this (above). So basically, our biggest uniform change of the season will be a shoulder patch. And an existing one at that. Looks like all of us jersey geeks will actually be forced to focus on the games this season — which is good, since there will only be 48 of them.

What's Out This Season?

You want a longer list? The number of sweaters being retired effective this year is higher than it's been since the Reebok jersey massacre of 2007. Granted, it's just three, but still. Lately, NHL teams have been more interested in adding jerseys than deleting them.

• Buffalo Sabres third jersey — It was launched to mark the franchise's 40th birthday. But after just two years, it will live on only in the history books.
• Edmonton Oilers third jersey — This sweater has a sordid past and very few of us will be sad to see it go. Its significant lack of striping and bland color scheme made it instantly hated as a home jersey. When the Oilers came to their senses and brought back their classic colors, this became the alternate. Two years later, we say good riddance.
• Florida Panthers third jersey — JetBlue got their money's worth, but no one else did. The Panthers were never meant to be blue and they definitely weren't meant to be powder blue. The Cats brought back the red last season and wrapped things up with this alternate.

Goodbye to these three alternate uniforms.

May we never see you on the ice again. As some misguided future throwback or otherwise.

Third Jerseys in a Shortened Season

One question I've seen a few times in going through the last week of emails has to do with how often teams will wear their alternate jerseys this season — that is, if they still have them. Typically, team's wear them 12-15 times during an 82-game season. My guess is that, with just 48 games this year, we might expect to see them 7-9 times each. Better than nothing, right?

Looking Ahead

If this lack of jersey news has you feeling down, fret not. I have a hunch this summer will be much more fruitful. We already know we're getting new stuff from Dallas and Minnesota in 2013-14. And I happen to know there will be a few surprises in store that haven't yet been reported.

Stay tuned for the first edition of NHL JerseyWatch 2013 coming this week!

Bruins, Kings 3rd Jersey Schedules

Couple of new third jersey schedules to get on the blog today. 

The Boston Bruins are bringing back their black third jerseys for a fourth season this year. On October 21, the club released a schedule detailing when it will be worn during the 2011-12 season.

I'm still holding out hope that one day they'll come to their senses and drop this jersey in favor of the gold Winter Classic one. But if I recall right, I don't think many Bruins fans would agree with me on that one. 

Zdeno CharaThe alternate threads will see action in 11 home games throughout the year. Here's the breakdown:

• Sat., Oct. 22 – vs. San Jose Sharks
• Tues., Nov. 15 – vs. New Jersey Devils
• Fri., Nov. 25 – vs. Detroit Red Wings
• Thurs., Dec. 8 – vs. Florida Panthers
• Mon., Dec. 19 – vs. Montreal Canadiens
• Sat., Jan. 21 – vs. New York Rangers
• Tues., Jan. 31 – vs. Ottawa Senators
• Sat., Feb. 11 – vs. Nashville Predators
• Sat., Mar. 3 – vs. New York Islanders
• Sat., Mar. 17 – vs. Philadelphia Flyers
• Sat., Apr. 7 – vs. Buffalo Sabres

The Bruins also pointed out that on Sat., Dec. 3, they'll wear their road white jerseys at home when they host the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Still think it's incomplete without waist stripes.

Moving on now to L.A.

The Los Angeles Kings basically have two alternate jerseys to wear this season. And according to the team, both are going to be used rather sparingly.

The new third jersey is a reprise of their old home jersey which lasted from 2007 until last year. (The new home jersey was the third until last year.) Plus, they're bringing back the brightly-colored purple and gold Legends Night jersey for a few games.

Justin WilliamsBut first, the third jersey will see action in just eight games (two on the road), about half of the league maximum.

• Thurs., Nov. 3 – vs. Edmonton Oilers
• Tues., Nov. 8 – vs. Nashville Predators
• Tues., Nov. 22 – at St. Louis Blues
• Wed., Nov. 23 – at Dallas Stars
• Thurs., Dec. 8 – vs. Minnesota Wild
• Thurs., Jan. 5 – vs. Phoenix Coyotes
• Thurs., Jan. 12 – vs. Dallas Stars
• Thurs., Feb. 16 – vs. Phoenix Coyotes

Some of those dates are pulled from the Kings' website via the link above. The rest come from LA Kings Insider Rich Hammond in a blog post from October 25.

There are only three Legends Nights, where the Kings will don those über-retro sweaters from the 1960s. They are as follows:

• Sat., Dec. 10 – vs. Dallas Stars
• Mon., Jan. 2 – vs. Colorado Avalanche
• Sat., Feb. 18 – vs. Calgary Flames

A couple other teams should be sporting retro jerseys on Jan. 2, but we're still waiting to see what the Rangers' and Flyers' Winter Classic jerseys will look like.

All of these schedules are going in the sidebar calendar along with the Tampa Bay Lightning's schedule. They haven't officially released a schedule, but they've historically worn the BOLTS jersey for weekend home games only and that's continued into this season.

Update on Sunday · Nov 6 · 2011 | 4:18 PM PST by Chris

Another third jersey schedule to add.

The Florida Panthers confirmed via Twitter last week that the blue third jerseys will be worn for all Sunday home games during the season.

This is apparently the final season that we'll be seeing the "JetBlue jerseys" as you'll recall Miami Herald beat writer George Richards reported in September that team management has fallen out of love with the look in a big way. GM Mike Santos actually called them "silly colors," referring to the dark blue and light blue of the alternate uniform.

Stephen WeissSo I went through the Panthers' season schedule these Sunday home games appear to be the final eight for this doomed sweater:

• Sun., Nov. 6 – vs. Tampa Bay Lightning
• Sun., Nov. 13 – vs. Philadelphia Flyers
• Sun., Dec. 18 – vs. Carolina Hurricanes
• Sun., Feb. 19 – vs. Anaheim Ducks
• Sun., Feb. 26 – vs. Montreal Canadiens
• Sun., Mar. 4 – vs. Ottawa Senators
• Sun., Mar. 11 – vs. Carolina Hurricanes
• Sun., Mar. 25 – vs. New York Islanders

I understand Santos' position. This jersey doesn't exactly scream Panthers and it got a lot of crap for borrowing the colors of the Penguins' third, but... I've always thought it was a nice looking jersey.

But I guess that leaves another question. When this jersey is retired, will the Panthers go back to the third jersey drawing board? Or will they stick with just two sweaters for a while? And if they do try a new third, what's there best bet?