Connected By Blue

So what do all of tonight's jersey concepts have in common? The color blue. That's it.

We'll begin with the Buffalo Sabres and a design that despite its stripes is actually rather cool.

Yeah, the striping does ruin it though, doesn't it? I like the logos and the colors (though I'd go with a white circle on the blue jersey) but I don't really understand the weird stripes. In case you can't really make it out, the logo on the shoulders appears to be the buffalo from the original '70s logo sans the swords beneath it.

These two deal with some simple modifications. The white Leafs jersey with the blue stripes leaves me wondering whether this would be a home or away jersey. It seems to have too much blue to be a road sweater yet it has too much white to be for home games. The Isles jersey, however, is a nice adjustment. Not great. But better.

Here are a couple of dark Thrashers jerseys. Your pick as to which is home and with is an alternate.

And finally, I promised a Blues fan I'd get this one posted tonight.

You know what to do now. Comment away. I'm interested in seeing what you guys have to say about these.

Poll: Coyotes vs Predators

	vs
Phoenix COYOTES		Nashville PREDATORS

Place your vote and then feel free to leave a comment as to how you came to your decision. Tell all your friends to drop in and vote! The more voices heard, the more accurate the results!

Poll opening date Mon Dec 10

Poll closing date Fri Dec 14

07SCTRN | #1C | PHXvNSH

Poll: Blackhawks vs Lightning

	vs
Chicago BLACKHAWKS		Tampa Bay LIGHTNING

Place your vote and then feel free to leave a comment as to how you came to your decision. Tell all your friends to drop in and vote! The more voices heard, the more accurate the results!

Poll opening date Sun Dec 9

Poll closing date Thu Dec 13

07SCTRN | #1B | CHIvTBL

Poll: Senators vs Hurricanes

	vs
Ottawa SENATORS		Carolina HURRICANES

Place your vote and then feel free to leave a comment as to how you came to your decision. Tell all your friends to drop in and vote! The more voices heard, the more accurate the results!

Poll opening date Sat Dec 8

Poll closing date Wed Dec 12

07SCTRN | #1A | OTTvCAR

Rebranding The Devils

Continuing his rebranding of the NHL, our friend Matt has taken a shot at the look of the New Jersey Devils. He emailed me these images to share with the rest of you.

If you want my opinion, the logos look fantastic, but I think the current primary works too well to throw out altogether. So my suggestion (which I feel like I've made before) would be to swap the primary and secondary marks. I think the secondary here is a great update of the classic Devils logo. I'm also a fan of the wordmark.

These jerseys are another great update, but I couldn't be more impressed by the alternate uniform. That one really grabbed me first. While overall not as impressive as some of his previous work, these are some very sharp designs.

By the way, Matt went ahead and painted his home jersey onto Martin Brodeur. And while I normally wouldn't post a photo of Brodeur on my blog without a puck in the goal net behind him, I'll make an exception here.

Like I said, great logo, but it seems like it belongs more to a minor league team on the front of the jersey. Those black jerseys are my favorite.

By the way, Matt wanted me to let everyone know that if you'd like to contact him directly about his work, feel free to email him at gfb_designs@yahoo.com. Otherwise, leave your comments below for all of us to read.

UPDATE (6:34 PM): Hey guys, due to popular demand, I'm introducing a small new feature. You can now access all of the rebranding concepts by Matt (aka GhettoFarmBoy) by clicking on the link under NHLToL Series in the sidebar. Or by clicking here. I'm considering creating an album solely for his work in the Concepts Gallery.

Just To Freak You Out XVIII

It's time for another belated edition of the Freak Out series. Hopefully I'll get over this cold soon. It's making me very unreliable here at NHLToL. And it's supposed to be Freak Out Friday, right? Anyway, let's dive in.

Wow, that was awfully violent. Who's hungry for buffalo tongue?!

I got a ton of submissions this week for the "If They Mated" category. And these are all about rivalries.

I don't even know what to say about this. Except that once again, don't send me hate mail as I am excessively illiterate and wouldn't understand it anyway. Also I didn't make these.

Perhaps slightly less inflammatory are these.

Everything's gone haywire. But wait it gets better. Sure anyone can mix two teams in a blender, but it takes a special kind of talent to do three.

Presenting the Anaheim King Sharks. Let me break it down for you. You've got the Sharks logo in Kings colors on a Ducks jersey. Can't get much more to the point than that.

While we're still on the topic of ridiculous jerseys, do you remember the crazy Red Wings design I posted a while back. (It's the second one down in that post.) Were you wondering what it might look like on Dominik Hasek? Wonder no more.

Don't know what he's so happy about. Hideous if I do say so.

Here's a scary merging of the current and original Canucks logos.

Whales that play hockey. I love it.

To finish up this morning's post, I've got a couple more whacked out logos. I'm pretty sure these come from a Quebecois looking to break away from Canada. It's like if Texas decided it wanted to be its own country. I laugh. But then I am a lousy Floridian who knows nothing of the politics of Canada. Look!

But wait, there's more!

So what do you guys think?

Oh and I'm just warning you now that any comments with discussion of politics will be promptly removed. Go elsewhere for that.

In the meantime, I hope I managed to freak you out a little. Until next time.

Poll: Blue Jackets vs Panthers

	vs
Columbus BLUE JACKETS		Florida PANTHERS

Place your vote and then feel free to leave a comment as to how you came to your decision. Tell all your friends to drop in and vote! The more voices heard, the more accurate the results!

Poll opening date Fri Dec 7

Poll closing date Tue Dec 11

07SCTRN | #0B | CBJvFLA

Poll: Sabres vs Avalanche

	vs
Buffalo SABRES		Colorado AVALANCHE

Here we go. It's the start of yet another logo tournament at NHLToL. Time for you guys to decide which team has the best secondary logo. We'll kick things off with a two-part preliminary round, starting with the Sabres and Avalanche.

Place your vote and then feel free to leave a comment as to how you came to your decision. Tell all your friends to drop in and vote! The more voices heard, the more accurate the results!

Poll opening date Thu Dec 6

Poll closing date Mon Dec 10

07SCTRN | #0A | BUFvCOL

The Award-Winning NHLToL!

Hey all! Just wanted to brag a little. NHLToL has been named an award-winner!

Joe Pelletier's Greatest Hockey Legends blog named its Top 3 blogs in six categories. NHLToL was No. 1 for Best Continuing Coverage Award. I guess Joe was impressed with my coverage of the unveilings of the new Rbk EDGE jerseys over the summer.

Anyway, I just thought that was kind of cool and wanted to share with everyone. Thanks to Joe and everyone else for reading the blog!

Legal Advice

I'm sure you're all looking forward to the Secondary Logo Tournament later today, but first I wanted to see if I could get a little help from the best readers in the blog universe.

I'm looking for some advice from a copyright lawyer or a lawyer who is familiar with copyright law. I had an idea for a really cool project that I'd like to look into but I want to first be sure I won't run into any copyright issues. It doesn't deal with this blog directly, but it is somewhat related.

I'd like to tell you guys about it because it will involve a lot of you and I think you'll really like it. I hate to be such a tease, but I want to make sure I've got all my ducks in a row first.

So, once again, I'm looking for a little advice from a copyright lawyer or someone very familiar with copyright and fair use law. Let me know if you or someone you know can help. I'd be forever indebted. Thanks!