Going Retro: In Design and Progress

It was brought about by Howard Berger of the Fan 590, but I read it from my good buddy (so I say to get better street cred) Greg Wyshynski from Yahoo, but some leaks have come out concerning the new third jerseys in the NHL this season. As you can see from the post, the lay out has happened for those teams.

First off, touching on the retro designs-- for me, it's a toss up. There are some that are really, really nice to hang onto and bust out on occasions, then there are some really bad one that become cool out of spite, with another section being very dull and uninspiring....like the Leafs one is; because be honest, there isn't much of a change between that and their current unis.

However, the retros better not too out of control. It seems that the MLB has been having a constant retro night for most of the teams. In fact, the Blue Jays have instilled a retro Friday, where every Friday home game, the Jays wear their powder blue uniforms. That's a little much for me, though some of the old MLB uniform are so delightfully horrible, they're classic.

Point is, the retro duds really should be used for special ocassions, while a new third jersey should be produced to make some kind of fresh look to it. It's not hard to make a "modern-retro" jersey-- just ask the Penguins and the Capitals. Both teams took an old design and updated it to make it a little more sleeker and with the times, as it were. All being said, I'd take the original Sabres logo over the Buffa-slug and Goathead anyday of the week.

Aside from the black alternate jersey trend that's happening again, it seems that teams are getting a tad lazy. With the Senators and Thrashers just using a wordmark as their alternate, it almost seems that the creativity has gone down the crapper. Especially considering both teams could have come up with uniform gold ("Gold, Jerry!! Gold!!"). Granted, the thought is that the new RBK Edge fabric really limits the ability to have anything elaborate on the uniforms themselves.

When all is said and done, at this point-- it's a wait and see. Much like the Edge uniform, all of these designs are speculation and may be able to change at a moments notice. Fun times in hockeyland when the uniforms are the hot-button issue.