OKC Barons Logos Leaked?

OKC Barons new logos?It appears that the Oklahoma City Barons will be the next AHL team and that their logos have been leaked!

OilFieldHockey.com and The Copper & Blue claim to have tracked down logos belonging to the new American Hockey League franchise on the United States Patent and Trademark Office website.

OilFieldHockey.com says "a trademark search this morning has uncovered the Logos for the Oklahoma City Barons." They then call it "official" — which it isn't, by the way, until an announcement is made by the franchise.

That being said, they do appear to be legitimate logos, and the images are hosted on the USPTO servers.

OilFieldHockey.com claims credit for finding the primary and word marks (top and bottom) while crediting The Copper & Blue with the OKC secondary mark (middle).

And for what it's worth, the @OKC_Barons Twitter account I talked about yesterday is now decked out in the new logos. It doesn't make any of this official. But if it's not, it's a really good ruse. I'd expect the official announcement in the next few weeks.

Update on Friday · May 7 · 2010 | 9:12 PM PDT by Chris

Start the countdown! Prodigal Hockey, which operates the new Oilers-affiliated AHL team has just announced that the team's name, logo, colors and uniforms will be officially unveiled at a press conference on Wed., May 19. The event will take place at 4 p.m. at the Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City.

Wild 10th Logo & AHL Report

Wild's 10th anniversary logoThe Minnesota Wild will celebrate their 10th anniversary next season. And we all know that no anniversary can be properly celebrated in the NHL without its own branding.

Meet the Wild's 10th anniversary logo. It started showing up recently on the team's official website in ads meant to promote 2010-11 season tickets. It's simple — a red X in the form of a pair of crossed hockey sticks with the years 2000 and 2010 in a wheat banner surrounding the primary logo. Gets the job done.

The Columbus Blue Jackets are also celebrating 10 seasons in the NHL this fall. However I have not yet come across their anniversary logo. I'm not even certain they'll have one. (But they probably will because it means being able to sell more stuff.)

That's not all. I also have a handful of AHL specialty jersey updates.

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Mike Ivall's winning Wolf Pack jerseyThe AHL's Hartford Wolf Pack held a jersey design contest this season, asking fans to design a specialty jersey.

It was subsequently announced that frequent Icethetics contributor Mike Ivall was named the winner and his sweater design would be implemented for a couple of games in late February. That did not happen.

The Wolf Pack instead told Icethetics that it would be worn for the final home game of the season on Fan Appreciation Night. That was last Saturday. And the jersey looked great. Congrats to Mike!

Nice to see an Icethetics artist taking his concept art all the way to the pros. NHL, here we come!

And there are a ton more photos on the Wolf Pack's Facebook page if you'd like to see more of the jersey. But nothing really beats a fight pose.

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Albany's final gameThe AHL's Albany River Rats sported special sweaters for their final regular season game in upstate New York.

Tom S. emailed in about this photo which appeared alongside a web recap of the 3-2 victory over the Adirondack Phantoms over the last weekend. Neither of us had seen that red jersey before, so I assume it was just used for this game.

No other details were available about it on the River Rats' website. And they did make the Calder Cup playoffs so they'll have a few more games up there before they head to Charlotte. (Scroll down for an update.)

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AHL Pens' specialty jerseyFinally, the AHL's Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins wore special sweaters to honor the military last Friday.

The design is similar to their third jersey — a knock-off of the Blackhawks' Winter Classic/third jersey — though it swaps the red and black. And the logo text is replaced with "Support Our Troops."

The Penguins defeated Albany 4-3 in the game and now the two teams are facing each other in the first round of the AHL Calder Cup playoffs.

The Penguins are also utilizing their Facebook page to provide even more photos for your viewing pleasure. Unfortunately none of these guys is in a fight stance, but they're still worth looking at anyway.

Thanks to Dave B. for the email!

Update on Thursday · Apr 15 · 2010 | 8:01 AM PDT by Chris

Albany vs. Adirondack for Time Warner CupFollowing up on the River Rats story, it turns out that while that is a specialty jersey, it had nothing to do with it being the team's last regular season game. 

Matt C. explains:

The Albany River Rats red alternate jersey described in today's blog post is actually the jersey worn during Time Warner Cup games between Albany and their Northway rival Adirondack (Glens Falls) Phantoms.

Each team wears a special alternate jersey for these games — Albany's jersey is actually a representation of the jersey worn by their mascot "Rowdy" in their logo, and Adirondack wears an orange-colored jersey with "Adirondack" spelled diagonally across the front similar to the jersey formerly worn by the Adirondack Red Wings.

Always great to get insightful emails like that. Thanks Matt!

Draft Lottery Tonight

2010 NHL Draft Lottery logoOver half the league is preparing for the playoffs which finally start tomorrow. Best time of year for hockey fans! Meanwhile, the LG NHL Draft Lottery takes place tonight at 8 eastern.

It will be televised live on Versus in the U.S. and even has its own logo and sponsorship. A bit odd, but I guess it's a spectacle now that it's on TV. I want my Draft Lottery 2010 t-shirt now.

So who's up for that No. 1 pick? The best my Lightning can do is No. 2 after finishing 25th overall. Edmonton (25%), Boston (18.8%), Florida (14.2%), Columbus (10.7%) and the Islanders (8.1%) have a chance. Anyone else wins the lottery and the top pick goes to the Oilers automatically.

So why is Boston so high? Despite finishing with the 6th spot in the playoffs, they did trade Phil Kessel to the Maple Leafs this season in exchange for their 1st round picks this year and in 2011. Too bad for Toronto.

If you're unable to watch the drawing, check back later tonight as I do plan on posting the selection order. Any excuse to post a list of NHL logos, I guess.

Update on Tuesday · Apr 13 · 2010 | 11:30 PM PDT by Chris

Okay, so I did something I don't usually do and knowing most of you, it's not going to be popular, but I'm used to it by now. I've injected my pathetic, ill-informed opinion into the blog, cobbled together from the CSS ranking and other random things I've read. Feel free to ignore it or tell me why I'm wrong.

Otherwise, below is a list of the teams getting the top 14 picks at the L.A. draft in June. Also included in the table is an at-a-glance look at where each team was placed in last year's draft and who they took in Round 1. TMI? Maybe.

	Draft Rank	Team	My Lame Prediction 2009 1st round picks
	1	Edmonton Oilers	Taylor Hall(10) Magnus Paajarvi-Svensson
	2	Boston Bruins	Tyler Seguin(25) Jordan Caron
	3	Florida Panthers	Cam Fowler(14) Dmitri Kulikov
	4	Columbus Blue Jackets	Brett Connolly(21) John Moore
	5	New York Islanders	Erik Gudbranson(1) John Tavares (12) Calvin de Haan
	6	Tampa Bay Lightning	Mark Pysyk(2) Victor Hedman (29) Carter Ashton
	7	Carolina Hurricanes	Emerson Etem(27) Philippe Paradis
	8	Atlanta Thrashers	Brandon Gormley(4) Evander Kane
	9	Minnesota Wild	Ryan Johansen(16) Nick Leddy
	10	New York Rangers	Derek Forbort(19) Chris Kreider
	11	Dallas Stars	Austin Watson(8) Scott Glennie
	12	Anaheim Ducks	Alexander Burmistrov(15) Peter Holland (26) Kyle Palmieri
	13	Phoenix Coyotes	Nino Niederreiter(6) Oliver Ekman-Larsson
	14	St. Louis Blues	Stanislav Galiev(17) David Rundblad

Early Cats Concept Art

Panthers unveil Den of HonorThis past weekend, the Florida Panthers unveiled their Den of Honor, a tribute to the brief but colorful history of hockey in South Florida.

Among the many exhibits at the BankAtlantic Center is a display that showcases some of the team's early logo concepts — of obvious interest to Icethetics readers.

Some early Panthers conceptsIt features two framed canvases with over a dozen different sketches of potential logos, designed back in the early '90s. 

These images come from a video about the unveiling of the Den of Honor, posted on the Panthers' website Saturday. Click here to watch it.

One of the most unfortunate sketches appears to be that of a panther stretching in a downward position, head on the ground and hind quarters way up in in the air. The witless puns almost write themselves.

More Cats concepts on displayThankfully, based on the majority of the concepts, it seems clear that management was in favor of a leaping panther. The only question dealt with the positioning of the paws.

Take a look at the sketch in the center of this image (right), the differently-positioned paws may be more anatomically realistic, but leave the logo feeling a bit unbalanced. And anatomical realism has no place in sports logos anyway.

See the small logo just above that one? It's nice to see they avoided the temptation to go with the three-quarter view — unlike some teams (Ottawa).

Personally, I think the Panthers have one of the coolest hockey logos despite its intricacies. And after 17 years it's neat to see the team finally showing us what could have been.

Just call it a third already

Bruins don classicsThe Boston Bruins broke out the Winter Classic threads for the fourth time this season on Sunday.

The Bruins donned their specially-designed duds before the home crowd, beating the New York Rangers 2-1 in their first indoor win while wearing gold.

At this point, they just need to call it the third jersey — officially. After all, the current black thirds could use replacing. The Bs arguably have the best home and road sweaters in the NHL along with the worst alternate.

Whether it returns this fall for the 2010-11 campaign remains to be seen, but it might be a safe bet that we'll see it again before this season is out. All the previous occurrences of the jersey were weekend matinee games.

Of course, the Fenway Park game was an afternoon match. The Bs wore the golds next on Saturday, Jan. 23 for a 1:00 PM start against Ottawa and again on Saturday, Feb. 6 for another 1:00 PM start against the Canucks. Yesterday's game against the Rangers started at 12:30 PM.

The Bruins now have two more afternoon home games left on the schedule. The first is Mar. 27 against the Flames and the other is Apr. 10 against the Hurricanes. Could it show up again at one or both of these games?

Jackets Investigating Logo Theft

In the category of things that are shockingly stupid, the Columbus Blue Jackets are investigating the theft of their logo by — of all people — a politician!

If you can believe it, U.S. Senate candidate Marc Delphine of Oregon has appropriated a slightly altered version of the Ohio NHL franchise's primary logo to promote his campaign, by flipping it to form a D with the flag — still practically the Ohio flag, by the way.

Here's the banner on his website:

Campaign steals Blue Jackets logo

It became obvious that the Blue Jackets didn't grant the campaign any special permission when the following was posted to the team's Twitter account about an hour ago:

For those who are asking about the misuse of the #CBJ logo, the issue is being looked into. Thanks to those who pointed it out.

To be fair, the logo may not have been stolen by Delphine himself but rather a P.R. hack for the campaign, but it's still a pretty shocking oversight on the part of the candidate.

Thanks to Matt for the tip!

Update on Wednesday · Mar 10 · 2010 | 8:54 PM PST by Chris

In the interest of fairness, read Puck Daddy's posting on the matter. Mr. Delphine explains that the logo was a contribution from a volunteer, and being a Libertarian from Oregon, knowledge of hockey logos is not one of his strong suits. (Nor is being able to properly vet images he wants to represent him as a candidate for high public office, apparently.)

The logo was removed from his campaign website earlier today after a flood of emails and calls from the media and the NHL. The matter has officially been put to bed.