Penguins Unveil Third Jersey!

The Pittsburgh Penguins unveiled their third jersey tonight! At the time I"m writing this, however, there are no pictures available on the team's web site.

I'm told the new sweaters are identical to what the Pens wore for last season's Winter Classic and I've even got a couple of pictures to share with you.

A reader sent these in this morning saying Dick's Sporting Goods had already put them on sale as of today — this, prior to the Pens' official unveiling.

Thanks to Loren for the pictures.

The only difference I can see from the Winter Classic jerseys is a slight boldening of the outline on the sweater numbers. Otherwise, the striping and shoulder yoke appears to be the same. Looks like whoever said it was going to be different was trying to throw us off.

I'll update this post later tonight when more pictures are available.

Update on Wednesday · Nov 5 · 2008 | 8:21 PM PST by Chris

The Penguins finally did post a picture of Tyler Kennedy, Kris Letang, Alex Goligoski, Paul Bissonnette and Eric Godard modeling the "new" third jersey. This is it.

But that hasn't stopped oodles of fans in attendance from sending in photos.

There are a bunch more photos accessible from Third Jersey Central.

These jerseys will make their on-ice debut against the Buffalo Sabres once again when they visit Pittsburgh on Saturday, November 15.

Around The League

The Pittsburgh Penguins will be unveiling their new third jersey tonight. Keep an eye on their web site around 6 PM. I'm assuming they'll post pictures right away. And as soon as they do, I'll update Icethetics.

Speaking of the Pens, I don't know if any of you have seen Zack and Miri Make A Porno yet, but Kevin Smith delivers a brief uniform history for the team.

In the first scene, you see Elizabeth Banks wearing nothing but last year's blue Winter Classic sweater. Seth Rogen has a 1991-92 Stanley Cup championship banner hanging on his wall. And later in the movie, a couple of punk kids are wearing a couple of vintage sweaters. One is wearing the black Mario Lemieux-era jersey (from when they won the Cup) while the other has a 1970s-era blue and white one.

So that was kind of cool if you're a Pittsburgh fan — or if you just like hockey jerseys.

According to Damian Cristodero of the St. Pete Times, goalie Mike Smith will be changing his mask on a monthly basis. He said specifically he'll wear a special Christmas-themed mask next month.

"I think it's a great idea for goalies around the league," he said. "The artists are willing to do it and goaltenders have fun with different masks."

Cristodero writes, "The current mask commemorates Veterans' Day and Canada's Remembrance Day. Both are celebrated Tuesday. The United States flag and army boots are on one side. The Canadian flag is on the other. All 30 NHL logos adorn the brow."

So that's kind of cool. However, this constant mask-changing will sure make things tricky when it comes time to do the 2009 Goalie Mask Tournament. Maybe we'll just have a hold a single poll of all his masks from this season in a preliminary round.

I added some new, better pictures to the Chicago Blackhawks' third jersey photo gallery. I've done this with all the teams and will continue to do so whenever they wear their new alternate sweaters.

So make sure Third Jersey Central is one of your regular stops. I think it's easily the best feature of this new site.

One last thing. I've been getting a few Team Canada rebrands. Once I get the Concepts section of the site up and running, I'll build a gallery so you guys check them all out. And feel free to submit your own.

Housekeeping!

I've got some Icethetics-related news for this morning. First, Third Jersey Central is complete, as far as the NHL is concerned. As time goes on, I'll be adding relevant pages for the AHL and ECHL as well as a bonus jerseys area of 3JC where we can keep track of other special sweaters, like those for the Winter Classic and such.

However, before that I need to get the Flashback '98 logo tournament back up and running. It's another one of those things where I'm just trying to figure out the best way to build the page. Hopefully I'll have that done before the end of the week.

I'm doing something new with the RSS feeds. Those of you who have subscribed already know. I've never liked include the full post in the syndication feeds because if you really want to know what it's about, you should drop by the site and see it. So now I'm include a one or two line teaser in the feed. This is better than having only the post title.

You can also see comments via RSS. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this, but on all new posts, comments close after two weeks. So if you've got something to say, you have 14 days to do it. I'm setting it up this way because usually after a week, once the post disappears from the main page, nobody comments on it anymore anyway.

In addition, here's some other stuff I'm working. We'll have a concept art section with Featured Artists. You'll be able to enjoy the complete works of guys like Matt (aka GhettoFarmBoy), Sigma Kappa, Emilis Acus, Mike Ivall, and many others.

A lot of folks have emailed me about having an Icethetics artist design a logo for their local team. I'm building a section that will be sort of a bulletin board for people in need of logos. I'll post their information and anyone interested in helping them out can send in their work. More info on that later.

I'm also going to start putting together a comprehensive section on goalie masks which should be interesting. I'm hoping to make it the biggest goalie mask database on the web. All in time, though. I'm also going to dig into the archives and put together pages on each of our past logo tournaments — who won and how they did it.

All that and more. And if you have any questions, comments or suggestions, feel free to email me any time.

Cam Ward Gets A New Mask

Cam Ward's got a new mask and there are pictures on the Carolina Hurricanes' web site.

I really like the mask he's been wearing this season, but this isn't bad either. I like the whole Cape Fear theme. And what shooter wouldn't get a little freaked by the creepy eyes staring back at him?

Team Canada Needs A New Logo

The International Olympic Committee doesn't allow national sports federation logos from team uniforms at the Olympics but now they're getting down to business and enforcing the rule. This means Team Canada won't be able to use this symbol in 2010 in Vancouver.

Jeff Vinnick/Getty Images

If you'd like to read more, TSN.ca has more details.

This has led numerous people to email in suggesting that we hold our own contest here at Icethetics to design a new logo for Team Canada — and by extention, other countries around the world. However, this isn't really a factor for most other countries.

It sounds to me like the IOC is trying to reduce the commercial element from what was originally meant to be an event featuring amateur athletes. Corporate sponsorship is one thing, but branding a national team doesn't really make a whole lot of sense.

Still, I'm up for it. If you guys want to create new logos and uniforms for Team Canada, Team USA, even Team Lithuania, I'll set up a page to display them (I can do that with a web site now, you see).