The Next Tournament
In the next day or two, I plan to start putting together the next logo tournament. It's looking like we'll ease back in with a mini-tournament featuring NHL All-Star Game logos, maybe going as far back as the 1980s. But as of today, we can even use the 2012 logo as well.
Let me know what you guys think of that. Meantime, I'm thinking the AHL will be our next major tournament. But I'll wait until we get the season started at the very least. I still have the NHL jersey tournament on the back burner as I want to consider including third jerseys, some of which we won't see until November.
Always open to suggestions. Share in the comments.
Chris
Got a lot of great suggestions here and by email. Sounds like we are indeed going with All-Star logos for the next mini-tournament. As soon as that wraps up, though, it's on to the AHL for our next major tournament. That will likely be followed up by our first ever NHL jersey tournament. Then our first tournament of 2011 will probably be the ECHL.
Can't really plan beyond that. But I will say I have plenty of ideas for bonus polls and mini-tourneys. So the voting won't end anytime soon. I'll post details on the All-Star logo tournament tomorrow. Voting kicks off Monday.
Reader Comments (28)
I think that would be interesting, though personally, I'd put my vote in for an ECHL logo tournament, though that could make an interesting mini-tourney as well.
I'm all for a jersey contest. In fact, I'd bracket up the All Star jerseys themselves! There's been quite a variance in design over the years, and frankly, there'd probably be quite a debate over which was the best (I'm going to place an early bet on the late 80's/early 90's black and white with orange ones with the NHL shield on the front to be the most popular, although the 2004 kit was pretty nice, too). Let's add the ACE jerseys from the first game, as well (the jerseys the All-Stars wore against the Leafs might actually be the nicest of all!).
I would rather do an All-Star jersey contest than an All-Star Logo contest. Recently there hasn't been that much variation in the general design of the logos. I am all for the AHL Logo Tournament. I would also like to do an OHL tournament or a massive CHL tournament with the QMJHL, WHL, and the OHL logos all in one tourney.
How about a tournament of defunct teams? Including the three incarnations of the Seals/Golden Seals, there are 26 teams, almost enough to be a full tournament... some of them are very sharp as well.
NAHL? What about the CHL (not Canadian, Central!)?
Logos by decade the team was founded (you can include defunct teams or not)!
i agree with rich all star jersey tourney rather than the logo tourney
• NAHL will be a future tourney. We just did a pretty obscure league, so lets go back to something everybody knows for this one.
• I don't really understand "logos by decade"... do you mean like a handful of mini-tournaments?
• A jersey tournament sounds all right, but we do logo tournaments here. And when I do finally switch things up for a jersey tournament, we're obviously starting with NHL teams — not all-star games.
• All good ideas. Keep them coming.
I kinda like the defunct teams idea. I would love to see the logos for the Eagles, Americans, Pirates, Quakers, Seals, Maroons, Tigers, Barons and such lined up. Don't include teams that still exist in a different location. It would involve lots of old schooly goodness that we haven't put up in a poll before (to my knowledge, and I've been following since the tournament of logos days, but I might have missed it along the way.) Add to that that it brings publicity to a bunch of teams that should be a little more remembered. Anytime one can drag the fact that there was an NHL team called the quakers up is a good reason to do anything in my book.
I really, really, really want the NHL to put out some merch with those old teams sometime. A gaudy Americans T shirt (with their jerseys, plenty of inspiration), a nice fitted cap with the Quakers script, so on and so forth. And I'm sure Jim Bastille would love to see a line of Hamilton tigers stuff that he could shill to promote a movement for a team there.
Love the idea of defunct teams.
I'm game for All-Star logos... Toronto 2000 had one of the best.
Logos by decade I guess would be a bunch of mini-tournaments. Each team would be in a bracket based on the decade the team was founded (Original 6, C/O '67, etc) to figure out which team would have the best logo from each decade. It's just a way of keeping it modern vs modern and vintage vs vintage to see who has the best modern logos and who has the best vintage-style ones.
Drew, I see what you're getting at. It seems to be a clever way of making some logos seem better/worse than they are in the bigger picture. If one of the keys to good logo design is that it stands the test of time — and in essence is timeless — this would defeat that purpose entirely.
However, I have thought about rearranging the groupings for the jersey tournament so that teams of the same generation face only each other during the round-robin portion. Here's the 5-group breakdown I came up with a few weeks ago:
Group A: CHI, TOR, BOS, MTL, NYR, DET
Group B: PHI, STL, PIT, LAK, VAN, BUF
Group C: CGY, WSH, NJD, EDM, DAL, NYI
Group D: TBL, OTT, SJS, FLA, COL, ANA
Group E: CBJ, MIN, NSH, ATL, CAR, PHX
It's not set in stone, but it goes along with the era-based format you guys are advocating. Thoughts?
I think a wordmark tournament would be cool
How about a tournament of unused logos? If you go to www.sportslogos.net and take the time to search through all of the NHL teams.... many of them have logos that were never used. Look at the Vancouver Canucks (a VC logo), Ottawa Sentaors (sideways version of the current logo), New Jersey (a horrible version of the NJ), and of course the Quebec Nordiques (the Huskey that was never used because of the move to Denver) just to name a few.
Just a thought.
how about another center ice design tournament after the season starts. Its been a couple season and many of them have changed since the last tournament.
I like that idea. That's a great way to determine the favorite logo of the generation while doing something bigger at the same time.
Kontinental Hockey League logos!
an unused logo tournament sounds very good
The defunct NHL team logo tourney sounds good. That could be spread to AHL & ECHL pretty easily too.
A KHL tourney would be awesome. Especially since nobody really follows that league and would not come in with favorite teams...
What about the USHL? I remember talk about it, but don't remember ever seeing it.
NAHL would be fun.
Also have Central Hockey League and the SPHL.
I say knock out the logo tourneys before starting a jersey tourney.
All Star logo tourney is not exciting.
What about college hockey logos? Maine, Minnesota, Boston College, North Dokota, etc... You can divide it into groups according to Conference, Hockey East, etc... I think that would be really cool
Could also do a tournament of original primary logos from teams - heck, it doesn't have to be limited to the NHL, either.
Defunct Logos (even though we know the Whalers will probably win) would be great.
KHL please! The European logos are so different from the style we have here, it would make a nice change of pace. Also, a few of them are pretty sweet.
Tyfighter, that "whalers will win anyway" is why I wanted to go with defunct teams, excluding the ones that are still around, even if in a different city. That way you kick the whalers, nords, and really any other team people might have emotional connotations with. The most recent teams you would see would be the barons and the seals, so not only do you have a bunch of logos that flat out haven't been seen on here, you have a bunch of logos that people won't have any biases about, so you get a fair vote based on the merits of the logo and the awesomeness of the name.
Or at least that would be the hope.
All-Star tournament would be awesome. DO IT!
I like the defunct team logo idea. I also liked the NCAA logo idea. The only problem is most colleges don't use their logo on their jerseys.
How about an AHL tourney?
All Star logo's? Does that include the uniforms as well? LOVE the 80's all star uni's