Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Only a matter of time before the camera phone strikes!

Chris at Icethetics got these up today from someone who leaked the new white road jersey and the new 40th Anniversary sweater. While overall, they look pretty good, the white is not as bold looking as it could be. They might have been better off making the underarms blue instead of silver and making the bottom middle stripe blue instead of gold...like the old jersey below with Pat Lafontaine. I gather that uniform cobblers judged that thin navy blue paired with the silver looks better than than yellow and silver for which I think most will disagree. Keeping the striping patterns the same on both home and away jersey makes production costs cheaper too, surely factoring into the design. Carpandean's mock up of the whites with the Navy bottom center stripe look far better than this leaked photo below of the new whites.


BUT...I'm happy with both jerseys and like the return of royal blue and am very glad there is no baseball script wordmark. I'm hoping the text is actually done in off white but the cloudy picture doesn't reveal that. The only question since these are blank jerseys is where on the new jersey, if at all, will be the player numbers...

Larry must be pretty ticked that these got out a week and change early. That's like 0 for 4 in the team keeping new uniforms under wraps statistic.








Overall, I'm actually suprised that the new 40th anniversary jersey wins here in my opinion. I did not expect the Sabres to go along with something that resembles the old Bisons wordmark at all, either not willing to pay the Pastor family for license to use the mark or out of totally oblivion to what the fans wanted. I was expecting a terrific new white jersey and was disappointed with some of the styling, mainly those stripes, leaving it excessively bland and yellow.

5 comments:

Drew Celestino said...

I love them both, primarily because neither contains the most pathetic excuse for an NHL logo ever created, our ol' buddy the Slug.

The retro-script looks great. I can see myself scooping up one of those for sure.

The whites look as expected, but with one alteration that I must say I do not care for. The bottom gold stripe should be blue, with its surrounding stripes in gold. They reversed it from the classic. Now it's just the same exact striping on a white jersey rather than blue. It looks off. Given the Sabres track record, I wonder if they even noticed this when they approved the design.

Dammit Quinn. You manage to even muck up a no-brainer.

Charlie @ Sabres Not Slugs.com said...

Drew, picture the yellow as one long slug smear all the way around the jersey, thus leaving it's lasting impression.

carpandean said...

I'm hoping that the color on the away stripes actually looks better in full color (not cell phone camera muted colors.) The combination is actually the one that I thought looked better in my concept, so maybe it will.

One interesting note is the yellow collar on the away jerseys. The whites have always had a blue collar. Not sure what I think of it.

Finally, it looks the the horse collar has thin yellow piping around it rather than a thick stripe.

While I hate to complain, as I couldn't be happier that the slug is dead, but I just wonder sometimes about the guys that they have working on these.

Dave Pogorzala said...

You know, I never really realized that on the old whites, the arm stripes went blue-gold-blue, and the waist went gold-blue-gold. It worked, but it's actually a bit odd if you really stare at it a while.

Absolutely love the new 3rd, especially since the silver accents seem to be minimal, if not absent altogether. The workmark is close to, if not the same as, the old Bisons logo. And I think they succeeded in making it evoke old-time hockey. The written logo to me is especially reminiscent of the Toronto St Pats, Vancouver Millionaires and Seattle Metropolitans. No it doesn't look like them, but it evokes the same idea. I would say it's a different effect than, say, the newer Stars sweaters, which resemble college uniforms (not that there's anything wrong with that, they're quite neat).

The new white is a bit underwhelming, but still a top-10 sweater league-wide. I guess my subconscious got used to seeing gold-blue-gold on the bottom, and the new one looks "off" without it.

5 stars all around!!

Anonymous said...

I have never been more happy in my life now that the slug is dead. However, they still managed to give us a product that isn't perfect. Much like the team...

Away Jerseys:
Ok, I love it compared to the slug. However, something just seems "off" about the jersey. Wouldn't you guys agree? First off, the stripes should be the opposite with more blue. Instead, that jersey makes me think about those Philadelphia Flyers construction worker "throwback" jerseys. Am I putting on a hockey jersey, or am I putting on a reflective construction worker vest? Next, the logo looks too small. Looks like someone set their collectable Sabres dinner plate on a white plus-sized t-shirt. On a side note, I woul dhave preferred the logo that Charlie above has for his profile image. Lastly, get rid of that ugly grey thats all over the damn place. Look at the LaFontaine pic above, that's what the jerseys should look like.

3rd/Alternate Jersey:
Not enough Bisons flair. They should have the Bisons bottlecap logo as a shoulder patch AT LEAST. The Bisons won 18 various titles, including 5 championships, including their final year sweeping the other team. That's more than the Sabres have ever done. Where's the Bisons championship banners? Why aren't they hanging at HSBC? They put Bandits and Blizzard banners up there, but not the Bisons? They were multiple-time champions, while the Sabres have yet to win a single championship and the rafters at HSBC are bare. Dont you think those 18 Bisons banners would really fill that empty space out? Don't you think that would make us look better? I say we start a petition to get those Bisons banners up in HSBC, because without the AHL Bisons we never would have had the Sabres. Back to the jersey, I like it, but it's too plain and badly needs a Bisons bottlecap logo for the shoulder patches. Period.

Aside from that, I'm happy about the jerseys. Can't say the same about what the Sabres did this offseason. We signed 7 guys with less than 30 goals last year... COMBINED.