Week 3: IceHL 2013 City Polls
Sunday · Apr 28 · 2013 | 12:01 AM PDTThe voting continues! This week's series of IceHL polls in 13 Weeks of R&R focuses on changing cities. But if we just looked at our two relocating teams, it'd be a pretty dull week. In addition to those, you'll also get to rethink the location names for the teams facing rebranding this summer.
Take a look at our standard pre-voting bullet points for details:
- Relocation: As I explained in last week's voting results, you'll get to choose from the top four cities selected as relocation destinations. They are Halifax, Toronto, Philadelphia and Ottawa. What happens if the same city wins both polls? Whichever team gets the highest percentage will get that city. (The other team will have to go with its runner up.)
- Rebranding: Nine teams were selected for rebranding last week. This week, you will vote on whether to change their location name. (For instance, should the Lumberjacks franchise be renamed for B.C. instead of Vancouver?)
- Toronto is available in multiple places here, but only one team will be able to claim it. Priority goes to the relocating teams. If the Arsenal or Renegades move to Toronto, the Steelcats may not be renamed for it.
- There's also a bonus poll at the bottom when you finish!
As always, happy voting!
Relocation
 |
 |
Rebranding
Existing location designation noted in ALL CAPS.
 |
 | |
 |
 | |
 |
 | |
 |
 | |
 | ||
Bonus Poll
One more question for you, unrelated to any relocation or rebranding. Every IceHL team has dark and light jerseys, but we've never decided on "home and road" designations.
Poll results will remain visible so you can check back throughout the week. Feel free to start a social media campaign to get your friends and followers to join in the voting. The more, the merrier!
Thanks for taking the time to vote! And if you have any questions, just ask.
Reader Comments (33)
Its a shame that Atlanta cant even keep a fictional hockey team.
I just wanna chime in on what I see as a valuable point on the side of White at home and Dark away. If you think about the NHL team you watch at home you always get to see them in their color for this purpose we will say red. So week after week its Red vs. White at home which is great and if you had a hypothetical wheel with a wing on your jersey it's not terrible but imagine if you got to see, white vs blue, and white vs green, and white vs purple at home its much more visually stimulating and you get to experience more diversity from the rest of the league.
@Matt That's why the NHL should switch to the premier league system where one both jersey can be any color (as long as they're different from eachother) and you can wear primary or secondary as you'd like, as long as it doesn't too closely match the home team's color.
There is no way the Renegades keep that name if they move to Ottawa.
In the USHL, it's white at home the first half of the season, dark at home in the second half. Get to see 90% of the jerseys that way.
Agree with March- if the Renegades move to Ottawa there should definitely be a name change.
I also agree with Matt about home jerseys being white. It adds more variety to the jerseys you get to see. Also, I just remember being disappointed as a kid when they changed it from home whites to home darks. I'd love to see home whites come back again.
Really hoping Philly can get one of the two teams.
I'm glad my Saskatoon become Saskatchewan idea seems to be sticking and taking flight.
I second Zam's hopes... Really hoping my hometown gets a team.
As for the Whites vs. Colors argument for home sweaters, I am FAR more likely to buy a team color sweater vs. a white one (although when it comes to the Flyers, I buy ALL jerseys, regardless of color, as long as they're not that ghastly Quakers abomination). Part of it is that team color sweaters are easier to re-number (if necessary), part of it is that most white sweaters are kinda boring. Would rather a team look (imho) boring on the road, than at home. It's one of the reasons that I always envied the Lakers in basketball: Gold home, Purple road... Only introduced a white jersey in the past 5 years or so.
Go Burnaby.
One thing that has always bothered me about the home team wearing darks uniforms is that it kinda takes the colour out of the game. For example, as an Oiler fan, every game I go to now is blue vs white....EVERY GAME! It used to be, white vs red, white vs blue, white vs black, white vs green, etc...
How about having a soccer-style jersey selection; with a primary jersey (to be selected via vote) for each team, allowing dark vs. dark games if that is both teams primary jersey, with the other jerseys being an alternate for when there are same-color issues?
I followed basketball for years before I came to hockey, and in most BB leagues in the world, it's white at home, so I first got surprised by the way NHL does. However, I quickly prefered that fashion, for the reason that a team playing in front of its own crowd should carry its colours up and proud. White is a bit dull, as Stan pointed out. Your colours are what define you as a club. Give them to your fans.
@Chris - not sure what you're planning to do about this, but as it stands right now, Halifax is the leading vote getter in both relocation polls. I'd suggest awarding Halifax to the franchise with the higher % in votes in both the current polls, and the loser would take the city that finishes in 2nd place in there respective poll. Or you could hold a single day playoff vote for us to chose which franchise goes to Halifax, and the loser goes to the city that finishes 2nd in their poll.
@Pablo - I couldn't possibly agree with you more on that. At first I didn't really like the league wide home/road jersey switcheroo in back in 2003-'04. But now I love it. The big thing is, there are and has been alot more home coloured jerseys in the crowds at home arenas across the league since the switch. Fans really representing the team's colours in full.
PS: I'd love to see Philadelphia land an IceHL franchise one day. I've got several great name ideas for that city.
Matt: That question was addressed last week. It'll go just like you thought. If the same city finishes at the top for both teams, it goes to the one with the higher percentage. The other team gets its second choice.
Ah, I didn't read that April 20th post all the way through. My mistake.
Right now Philadelphia has over a 15% lead on Ottawa in the Arsenal vote, but trails Ottawa by less than 2 % in the Renegades vote. Because Halifax is getting the team that it has the higher percentage for, the Arsenal will go there. So with the way the rules are... then the second place Renegades go to Ottawa even though Philadelphia overall has way more votes for a team than them. That would not really be fair for Philadelphia.
So Philly will most likely finish with more votes than Ottawa, but they won't get a franchise. That sucks.
March and Ryan: These polls aren't about what's "fair" for Philadelphia. They're about what's fair for the two teams being relocated. So far it's clear that Philly is the second choice for the Arsenal. But it's the third choice for the Renegades. And let's not forget it was actually third in overall city voting.
I could've left Philadelphia and Ottawa off entirely since Halifax and Toronto actually received the most votes in that original poll. But I wanted to give those two cities one more shot since the voting was so close. Now it seems like after finishing second in initial voting, Toronto won't be getting a team at all. (And it appears even the Hamilton area franchise won't be renamed for Toronto either.)
Darks at home? Are you guys nuts? That was a terrible move by the NHL.
In regards to home and away jerseys...
Can we add a poll optional for Primary and Secondary Jerseys as well. So each team will have a main jersey they wear, and they will only wear the other colour if their visiting a team that has the same colour of jersey?
This also means we could have another week of polls where we can vote which jersey each team would be designated as primary vs. secondary..
JL Tell that to Montreal, who were forced for years to wear white jersey to an arena full of faithful wearing the colors?
But to agree with some other comments above, it would be good to see the league adopt a bit for flexibility to allow home against home jerseys where the colors are different enough to not have an on ice conflict.
Yeah, the move to dark home jerseys was pretty stupid. The guys in white used to be the good guys, the home team, now every team that visits your city is white. Where's the colors? The opponents were able to display all the different colors back then, now the other team looks pretty much the same as the last team that visited, give or take a few stripes and a different logo.
Oh, and Rob in Cascadia, big deal if the ''Montreal faithful'' wore different jerseys! Heaven forbid that the fans are ''forced'' to wear the colors while the home team wears white. (ugh).
Jordo: Wow, I'm actually a big fan of that idea! Why should every team be forced to have a white jersey? Especially if white isn't even in their color scheme. IceHL games aren't "televised" so there's no need for high contrast. We just need multiple versions for teams that wear the same colors.
Really thinking this is a direction we can go. Perhaps our next big project? A complete IceHL overhaul of IceHL uniforms. Anyone else like this idea? Should we move forward with it.
You people do know that we can't have two teams in Halifax, right?
Personally I do really like the idea of going without designated home and road jerseys, however I'm not sure about eliminating the white jerseys altogether. Some teams have great looking whites and it's a long-standing tradition not just in the NHL but in almost every sports league to have light and dark jerseys. Maybe we could vote on some teams that could create a non-white light jersey. For exapmle, instead of white, the Blue Crabs could use a light blue jersey and the Nighthawks could wear a lime green jersey. Keep in mind too that we still have the third jersey competition coming up, that will hopefully add some colour to the league.
On another note, it would be cool to come up with some way for teams to display which jersey they are using in any given week. Maybe one of our designers could put the jersey designs on a full body player template and we could display the images side by side somehow for each matchup. Has anyone else thought about this?
Chris, I think Jordo's idea is great. The whole point of the exercise is to be something different than the NHL, and going with a "club" jersey and alternatives when there's a conflict in color is awesome.
It would get away from the second jersey being a negative version of the first, and really allow some creative things to come out in terms of design. Additionally you could have more than one designer, with a Club jersey being one person and the alternate being an entirely different person.
Look at Barcelona. You have the uber traditional stripes (that they change every three years) and the sunrise orange yellow. There's no way the same person did both.
Chris: If that is an option to shake things up and go with non-contrasting designs rather than whites vs colors, then that gets my vote. It could shake things up and really give some teams a more distinct personality. Just look at the old Canucks Yellow "flying V" jerseys They certainly had a better impact than the white Canucks jerseys that followed in the 80's.
The teams up for third jersey in July could be given an option of either getting a proper third jersey with a special "3rd" design or op to have a new colored variant of their "white" jersey in order to start fazing in a new plan.
Mile High: With a number of teams in the league, heck with most of them, sure, the difference between a home and an away jersey can be little more than a simple palette swap, but for for some teams, the difference can mean a lot more.
While you may feel that my example is a "big deal" for may it was, and I doubt just in Montreal, but when the NHL put in the original rule which included white uniforms for home attire, you had teams like the Canadiens who were basically told by the league, that teams history or identity were not important, and it was in part due to the fans who complained they weren't seeing their teams play in their iconic jerseys that the league made the decision to flop to dark home jerseys.
it seems like people are just voting to get whatever city a team, regardless of how they'd fit together. C'mon! Ottawa Arsenal! that's some great assonance or whatever!
I dont like the idea of a club jersey and an alternate. However, I really think that the idea of the light jerseys not necessarily being white. Yellow, light green, light blue, light orange, pink (not really, but maybe an alternate), tan, or white. Ive been using the Pens light blue and Bruins yellow jerseys against dark unifroms on NHL video games for a while.
I'd love the idea of having primary and clash uniforms for IceHL teams- it's something that I've always wished the NHL would adopt. It wouldn't mean that we'd have to get rid of white uniforms entirely (heck, teams like Quebec could even wear white for their primaries), but it would give teams with unique color schemes the option some exciting sets (grey/orange for Minnesota, green/blue for New Orleans, etc.).
i really like the idea of a club jersey and a clash kit, not mandatory a white one. the choice to go with white as a clash kit should be left to the club. i wouldn't like to allow teams to choose colors that are not part of the color scheme for the clash kits, like chelsea and barcelona did it with neon or a lot of european clubs with black.
photoshoped fake match pictures with players wearing the icehl jerseys, as someone suggested, would be nice, too. or at least let the players wear the respective icehl jerseys in the year book, if no copyright issues are involved.
Chris: I know that this would have to go up for vote and that an appropriate name would have to be chosen, but considering the Calgary logo is so great and Calgary will have to change their identity, would it be possible for that logo to re-surface with a different team?
I think it would be a shame to see such a good logo to die off due to a poor choice of name.