Blues To Unveil Third On Sunday

The St. Louis Blues will unveil their new third jersey this Sunday at FANfest, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Jeremy Rutherford wrote in his blog Morning Skate tonight that the new jersey was actually shown to him and he described it in detail.

The jersey is Navy blue with a circular logo on front. In the logo is a silver-stitched Arch with the Blue Note positioned inside the legs of the famous St. Louis monument. Above the circle, it reads “ST. LOUIS” and below it “BLUES.”

Upon further exploration, I noticed that the Blues’ new jersey (which will be worn at least 15 times this season) has the old-school draw-strings near the neck with white numbers, trimmed in Navy blue and gold. There is also a Bluenote crest on the shoulder of the jersey.

It’s hard to please everyone, but the team’s hard work appears to have paid off.

I won't post the entire write-up here but I highly recommend giving it a read. As for the vitals, the most important thing...

Fans will be introduced to the jersey this Sunday at FANfest, where five of the Blues players (Brad Boyes, Lee Stempniak, David Backes, Eric Brewer and Paul Kariya) will be showing them off on the ice. They will be available to order on Sunday but won’t be delivered until mid-November.

They will first hit the ice on November 21 when the Blues face the Anaheim Ducks. (Which team is going to look better? It's a landslide.) The Blues will wear the new sweaters for 10 home games and 5 road games — for an interesting change of pace. I'm assuming a schedule will be released at some point.

Another interesting note.

The Blues toyed with the idea of powder blue (which the team wore earlier in the franchise’s history), but the ‘Powers that be’ decided they want to move forward. Davidson reportedly was in favor of the Navy blue.

And also the Thrashers wear powder blue jerseys at home and the Penguins will supposedly wear powder blue thirds this year.

Finally, my thanks to everybody who got on top of this almost immediately. Drew, Leanna, Cody, Stephen and Adam... you guys should know you all sent me emails within 12 minutes of each other. Well done.

I'm excited and I'm not even a Blues fan. Can't wait to see what these jerseys look like. Don't forget that the Buffalo Sabres also have plans to unveil their third jersey on Saturday. Less suspense for that one though because of all the leaks. We're still having a Live Chat though and now I'm thinking we may do another on Sunday. Standby for that.

NHL 09 Had Chops Jerseys Right

Time for me to eat my words. Looks like NHL 09 did have the Iowa Chops' jerseys right after all.

For some reason, I completely missed the press conference where the Chops announced their logos and jerseys. Apparently their web site has a whole gallery — which features the following picture.



The jersey mockups on those boards look an awful lot like what the Ducks wear. Thanks to everybody who pointed out my failure on this. I really should pay more attention to the minor leagues, you know.

In fact, I should mention that this jersey looks an awful lot like the Augusta Lynx — with one color swapped. Right down to the numbers on the sleeves.



Yeah, now I'm starting to question everything.

THN Down To 8 Logos

I was all set to write an "Around The ECHL" post today to round out the week. But I honestly couldn't find anything. Either I'm really out of touch with the ECHL or there just isn't anything relevant out there to report on. Except for one thing.

Remember when The Hockey News kicked off their knockoff of NHLToL? Apparently they're down to their final 8 logos this week — the Elite 8, if you must.



Yeah, they even have a clever little graphic to go with it. We can let this serve as our ECHL news for the day. The Florida Everblades (my local team) and the Ontario Reign — ironically, they're from California — are in this special group. The Everblades beat out the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Reign topped the Minnesota Wild, shockingly. It's worth checking out the rest of the bracket.

It sort of makes me want to do something similar to see if we'd end up with the same results here. Based on past experience, I highly doubt it. That means it's time for a poll. Off to the right there you cast your vote. Should we try a multi-league logo tournament similar to but not exactly like what THN did or would that just be a waste of time?

Poll's open until Saturday at noon. I'm curious to see what everyone says.

UPDATE (2:17 PM): NHL Jeff brought up a good point with his comments. A few ECHL teams have unveiled new logos, albeit not recently, but still worth mentioning.

The South Carolina Stingrays have a new logo incredibly better than its predecessor. Easily one of my favorite new logos. It was unveiled by the team back in June.

It also has a couple of nice secondary logos to go with it, plus a new 15th anniversary logo. I'll go into all of these in more depth in the Season Preview in a couple weeks.

The Charlotte Checkers introduced a new primary logo — again, a huge improvement over what came before it. This logo is an anomaly because from what I've been reading it was introduced midway through last season — meaning the Checkers actually changed horses midstream.

They, like the Stingrays, also had a 15th anniversary logo. And again, I'll talk more about all of this in the Season Preview.

And then of course there's the Ontario Reign — the reincarnation of the Texas Wildcatters who were unable to stay in Beaumont. This logo is one of the final 8 in the THN tournament discussed above. It's a good logo, but better than the Wild? Really?

And while I'm on the ECHL, I might as well mention a couple of things I found interesting. The Columbia Inferno have suspended operations this year because of arena issues but will supposedly return next year. And the Toledo Walleye will also begin play then — they're the former Toledo Storm which ceased operations when the city decided to build a new arena.

It's all very confusing and strange. Stop playing for a year, then come back. Constant relocating. I think this is why I've never been able to get into minor league hockey.

Next Live Chat & More

Always with the little notes lately. What's with me?

The next Live Chat will take place starting at 10 AM on Saturday morning and will revolve mainly around the unveiling of the Buffalo Sabres' new third jersey — which, according to their schedule, is set to follow a team scrimmage at 10. I'm assuming at least a half hour for that which will give us all time to chat before the big reveal.

But that's not all that will be going on here at Icethetics this weekend. No, sir. We'll be following a number of other fan events being held by teams around the league for the possibility that an elusive third jersey could surface. At the top of my list — the St. Louis Blues. I'll also be keeping an eye on the Senators, Blackhawks and Coyotes as they kowtow to fans as well.

We've also got fantasy league stuff to deal with. Once I finalize all of the team names for the Pacific Division, you can start submitting logo art. You'll have three weeks to do so — so don't rush it. Take your time and come up with something good. I'm giving you lots of time and I don't want to see garbage.

We'll also start rating names for the Central Division. I've already selected the 20 finalists for each city. The name nominations for the North and Northeast Divisions will end on Saturday. Then I'll begin accepting name submissions for the cities that get selected from the South and Southeast Divisions. At that point we'll also have a final list of the 30 cities that will be included in the league. Now we're getting somewhere.

I think that about covers it.