Eastern Finalists Revealed

Welcome to the IceHL blog. From now on, this is where you'll find everything related to our fantasy hockey league project, so keep checking back here for what's new.

As promised, it's time for the unveiling of the Top 3 finalist logos for each of the IceHL teams in the Eastern Conference. I'm not revealing the final ratings for any of the logos so as not to taint the voting results. Logos are displayed randomly.

Atlanta Arsenal
Joey Light	John Wriston	ogre39666
Baltimore Blue Crabs
John Wriston	Joey Light	Chris Smith
Boston Colonials
Eric Poole	Chris Smith	Shawn Steadman
Chicago Hitmen
Six Zero	Roccot	Craig C. Wheeler
Detroit Motorheads
tdog	Craig C. Wheeler	Chris Smith
Hamilton Steelcats
Chris Smith	Roccot	Sean Cox Tattoo
Milwaukee Lagers
Eddie Ray Design	JFred	Craig C. Wheeler
Minnesota Mammoths
LLP	Tone Loc Productions	Chris Smith
Montreal Olympiques
Craig C. Wheeler	Eddie Ray Design	Southpaw Design
North Carolina Nighthawks
Six Zero	Emilis Acus	Nick Matarese
New York Guardians
tdog	Craig C. Wheeler	Roccot
Quebec Armada
Chris Smith	Jason New Era Usher	Craig C. Wheeler
St. Louis Archers
Roccot	Craig C. Wheeler	Sigma Kappa
Tampa Bay Barracudas
Craig C. Wheeler	Six Zero	Chris Smith
Washington Sentinels
Six Zero (1)	tdog	Six Zero (2)

The Western Conference finalists will be revealed tomorrow and voting will then begin this weekend. By the end of August, we will have logos for all 30 IceHL teams. That's when the fun starts — jersey designs! Before I start taking submissions on those, we'll have a poll deciding whether third jerseys should be introduced alongside the home and road sweaters or if they will be created later and only for select teams.

After that, there are a lot of options. We can make the uniforms available to be used in video games such as NHL 09. We can expand the league and add new teams, as has been suggested. Some of you have even put forth the idea of creating the IceHL's development league.

All great ideas, but all for the distant future. As for what's next, voting kicks off Saturday. Team polls will be posted here in random order. When you vote, you will have the artist's complete branding package available to make your decision.

Notes: While voting is taking place during the next few weeks, I'll be setting up an image gallery where you can view all logos submissions created for this project that weren't selected as finalists. Also, please be aware that the Chris Smith who designed many logos for the IceHL project is NOT me. It's just a ubiquitous name we share.

Comments

[Kelly]

Very very cool stuff here. I'll immediately throw my vote in for NHL 09 integration! That would be beyond awesome. :)

[Evan]

My favourite is Joey Light's design for the Atlanta Arsenal. I think the voting will be pretty easy for me, some designs are obviously better than others.

[Austin Darbyshire]

i love most of the designs. i remember some ones i really loved. i guess they must have been in the western conference

[Kevin Y]

Really glad this is back. This is a nice bunch of logos here. Can't wait for the jersey designs.

[Patrick]

my favorite logo so far is the TDOG's one for the Washington Sentinels.
Classy, not too much stuff on it.... and I've always liked a big letter in the logo !

[RM]

What happened to the designs for the Hamilton Steelcats team?

[Chris]

Dude, you're right. How did I manage to miss that? It's been taken care of. Thanks RM.

[Matt Marczel]

I am really excited about the return of this ICEHL project. My favorites of these Eastern Confrenence primary designs would be Eric Poole's Boston Colonials, tdog's New York Guardians, and last but not least Craig C. Wheeler's Quebec Armada design, all are in my oppinion big league quality primary logos, although all of the other Eastern Conference designs were very nicely done as well, to me these ones stood out the most. I really can't wait to see concept Jersey submissions, esspecially for the teams and logos I previously mentioned.

[Spencer]

All of these are really good looking.

[matt]

love em....and this idea i've loved from day 1......but when can we get some hi-res bigger images?

[Jacques-Andre LeBeau]

Wow. Almost all these logos are incredible, and the sets for the Colonials, Armada and Barracudas are just amazing.

[JasonNewEra]

Glad to see at least one of my designs made it. I did really terrible in the long run. Colors could have been a downfall too though.

Glad this is back Chris, can't wait to see who wins and then get the next part moving.

[Jake Niehl]

wow....these logos are amazing. Really kickass.