Rbk EDGE Review: Panthers

Part 9 of 30. All 30 NHL clubs have unveiled new jerseys under the new Rbk EDGE Uniform System for the 2007-08 season. Here at the NHLToL, we're going to review every one of them. Read up and then rate the new sweaters. We'll do a full ranking after completing all of the reviews.

Rbk EDGE Uniform System

Florida Panthers

New Uniforms

Old Uniforms

The Unveiling
Saturday, July 28. The Panthers unveiled their new jerseys to fans at the Year of the Rat Alumni game in Sunrise. Nathan Horton and Stephen Weiss modeled the jerseys on the ice in full gear.

Home vs. Road
Home: Blue. Road: White. The two sweaters are essentially mirror images of each other and both feature secondary logo patches on the shoulders with the primary logo serving as the crest.

The blue home jerseys feature thick red stripes extending from the shoulder the length of the sleeve, bordered in yellow piping. Yellow piping also runs down the front of the sweater from the neck line to the bottom. Spaced yellow-red-yellow stripes go around the underside of the elbows, stopping at the yellow piping along the sleeves. The collar is blue outlined in thin yellow piping.

The white road jerseys feature thick red stripes extending from the shoulder the length of the sleeve, bordered in blue piping. Blue piping also runs down the front of the sweater from the neck line to the bottom. Blue-red-blues stripes with yellow spacing go around the underside of the elbows, stopping at the blue piping along the sleeves. The collar is blue.

In The Details
The logo on the chest is now much larger than before. The same numbering and lettering style has been retained.

New & Old
The Panthers new jerseys differ in several minor ways from the old ones. Gone are the slanted stripes around the sleeves and the pointed shoulder yokes. The horizontal stripes around the waist have also been removed. The Panthers did keep the primary and secondary logos in the same location as well as sticking with blue for the home jersey. Little else has really changed. Mainly, piping has been introduced along with stripes extending past the shoulders and down the sleeve.

Standard FAQ
Numbers on the front? No.
Laces at the collar? No.

NHLToL Editorial by Chris
My initial reaction to the new Panthers jerseys was good. On first glance, I thought they were really sharp. But if you really look at them, you notice how busy they are. We see a lot of piping and the clash of horizontal and vertical stripes at the elbow. While it doesn't look great on the rack, this is one jersey that is very nice looking on the ice. Still, one annoying trend among the new EDGE sweaters with piping is the captains' letter crossing that line. I could live without that. But aside from some tiny nitpicks, I think this is a very nice looking jersey. 4/5

View the photo gallery

Buy your new Panthers jersey!

In The Pipeline

I get emails on a daily basis with excellent ideas on ways to further this blog. Plus every so often, some of my own ideas spring up on me. And there are a handful of them that I'd like to move forward with in the future. So I'm using this post to publicly keep track of what's under development for NHLToL as well as the new ToHL.

NHL Tournament of Logos

Upcoming Logo Tournaments
The next three logo touranments I have planned are Vintage Logos, Secondary Logos and Third Jersey Logos. Right now, you guys are voting on what the next one will be. And at the time of this writing, Vintage has a slight edge over Third Jersey. So that's the more immediate future. Each of these tournaments will last roughly four to five weeks.

On days off from regular polls, while we wait for the next challenger to move ahead, we'll do bonus polls just like in the Championship Tournament. We've been doing Logo History polls which take feature only the primary logos in a team's past against its current mark. During the next tournament, my plan is to have logos from relocated teams square off. For example, Coyotes versus Jets, Avalanche versus Nordiques and Hurricanes versus Whalers. The plan is to get through as many as possible.

In the future, we can also hold votes on primary versus secondary as well. My other thought is that if we ever run out of ideas of things to vote on (not likely) we could just pick a year and take all the logos that were used in that season and hold a year-specific logo tournament.

Rbk EDGE Uniforms
As you know, the new Rbk EDGE uniforms have been a big point of interest for me on this blog. I'm in the middle of writing a series of reviews for all of the new sweaters. When that is complete, we'll tally up the final votes and see how the jerseys rank with each other. I'm also putting together a bunch of easy-access information on the new jerseys which I'll tell you more about soon.

Another interesting idea would be a Uniform Tournament. You all would be able to vote on the best of the new Rbk EDGE uniforms. And by the same token, we could also do a throwback tournament where you vote on the best of the old uniforms as well.

Center Ice Logos added 10/3
Just remembered another idea I'd been thinking about. And I'd like to do this one soon depending on what you guys think. We can hold a Tournament of Center Ice Logos. In every arena across the league, the center ice logo is portrayed just a little bit different. We can find out who has the best one.

Goalie Mask Voting
I know it's called this NHL Tournament of Logos, but I think this site is about more than logos. One thing that a lot of people have suggested is voting on various goalie masks from around the league. Some of the designs are very creative and are worth taking a good look at, if you ask me. I'm collecting pictures at the moment, but some time before this hockey season is over, I would very much like to do a Goalie Mask Tournament.

Another great suggestion I've gotten is doing a Goalie Mask Concept Gallery where you all could design masks and submit them. Let me know if that's something you're interested in and perhaps I'll move forward with it. (10/11)

NHLToL Web Domain
One small thing that I'm considering is getting the blog it's own domain such as nhltol.com or something of the like. You'd still be able to access it at nhllogos.blogspot.com, but what would you guys think of that? And what address should I try to get? As a side note, if I did that, I'd ask for donations as I've yet to put a single penny into making this site. No sense in starting anytime soon, right? Of course, it would be up to the readers.



Tournament of Hockey Logos

AHL or ECHL? Or AHL vs ECHL?
The two biggest and most popular minor leagues are arguably the AHL and ECHL. Therefore, they'll be up first. At the moment, I'm holding a poll over there for folks to decided which one will be first. The AHL is running away with it after over 1,000 votes. You still have two weeks to vote, however.

Plus, once both tournaments have ended, we'll have a poll between the best AHL and best ECHL logo. We could even set up an entire bracket of individual match-ups of AHL versus ECHL logos. But first, I'd want to get to some of the other minor leagues.

Other Leagues Under Consideration
There are many minor and junior leagues out there, some with great team logos. I'd like to cover as many as possible. Among those I'm considering:
CHL - Central Hockey League
OHL - Ontario Hockey League
QMJHL - Quebec Major Junior Hockey League
WHL - Western Hockey League
BCHL - British Columbia Hockey League
EIHL - Elite Ice Hockey League
USHL - United States Hockey League
NAHL - North American Hockey League
IHL - International Hockey League (current IHL and defunct IHL)

And there's no reason why we can't do any other defunct leagues or teams as well. If there is anything else not on this list that you think should be considered, please let me know.

Concept Logo Tournament
One of the things we do a lot here is concept art. Everyday, I get new emails with concept art designed by readers. And every day I try to post a few items. Well one thought for a competition is to do a Concept Logo Tournament. We'll take the best concept logos from every team and see which one comes out on top.

Rec League Tournaments
We could even collect logo submissions from recreational leagues and high school teams. That would make for an interesting tournament because the majority of the voters would have no emotional connection to the teams and could vote free of fan bias.

College Uniform Voting
A great idea that was suggested is a College Hockey Uniform Tournament. We could have votes on logos, but a lot of them are very institutional and might not stand up to certain kinds of competition. Still, the uniforms might be fair game.



I know all that up there is a lot to consider, but it just means that these two sites have potentially big futures ahead of them. And as long as you guys keep coming back to vote, I'll keep thinking up polls to let you vote on.

The biggest thing I need to mention in this post is that I want your input! I'm making this site for you guys so if there's something you want to see that I haven't posted here, please drop me a line. I'm open to doing all sorts of things but I can't think of everything myself. So review each category above and if you see something you think you can improve upon or if there's something I haven't covered, feel free to contribute.

I look forward to hearing from you guys!

Stars, Here's How You Fix It

Now that I'm posting the ninth part of this series, I think I should note that, by and large, I'm a big fan of all the new Rbk EDGE jerseys so don't let the fact that I'm posting so-called "fixes" make you think otherwise. I just think it makes for an interesting feature to ponder what might have been.

That said, let's see what we can do about the Dallas Stars. I think the home black jersey — which now features the city name as its crest — is very cool and unique. I like it if only because no one else has done it.

I think this is probably the easiest and most obvious fix — essentially the white jersey in black.

It uses the primary logo on the crest and the secondary logos on the shoulders along with a bit of piping at the bottom of the sweater. The current black jersey has the word "DALLAS" arched above the jersey number on the front and the primary logo on the shoulders. It's also solid black all the way to the bottom.

Personally, I like the real one better.

Moving along, we have a completely different design. Imagine more green and more apparent striping.



Obviously that's not a home-and-away set as neither is white, but it would make a good home-and-alternate set. While I do like the new black jerseys, I was always a fan of the Stars wearing green. Seems like teams aren't liking that much these days as the Wild also recently ditched their green sweaters.

So if green's not your thing, what about gold?



While it's a decent concept, I don't think it would translate well to a uniform. I can't imagine that looking very good on the ice.

How do you feel about it? Do the Stars need to rethink their new duds? Or will keeping the jerseys make them look like studs? Har.

Coming up: Toronto Maple Leafs.

What A Wild Work Of Art!

You know, surprisingly, it has been a lot of work getting the new site up and running in the last few days. If you haven't seen it yet, check out the Tournament of Hockey Logos blog, the spinoff to NHLToL. If you're a minor league hockey fan, head over there and vote for which league will get the first tournament — AHL or ECHL.

Now onto today's news — or something like that. Two months ago I posted a really cool secondary logo someone designed for the Minnesota Wild using the outline of the state itself. Well another one was sent to me and I think it's even better!



I can't get over how many talented people read and contribute to this blog. It's really a great thing. That logo matches so well with the primary while at the same time maintaining its own identity. That is very impressive work and I'd like to be the first to say so.

On a separate yet Wild-related note, several fans have suggested the team return to green home jerseys and keep the red for an alternate sweater. So here's what the current home jersey would look like in green.



It certainly is unique and not all that bad, if you ask me. Yet for some reason this one conjures up Christmas for me — unlike the red one. So I'm posing the question to you all. What do you think?

Beyond that, what do you think of that logo? Impressive work isn't it? I look forward to reading your comments as always.

Poll: Jets Logo History

1979	1990

We've pretty much gotten through the league by now with the logo history polls. So we're hitting up a couple of deceased teams yesterday and today. If you think I left out anybody important, feel free to drop me a line in the comments or by email.

Place your vote and then feel free to leave a comment as to how you came to your decision. Tell all your friends to drop in and vote! The more voices heard, the more accurate the results!

Poll opening date Oct 2 @ 4:57 AM

Poll closing date Oct 9 @ 11:59 PM

07BONLH | LHWPG

Result: Canadiens Logo History

BEST ALL-TIME
1952
90% 4,147 votes


4,604 total votes

1925
10% 457 votes

Click here to see the original poll

Poll opening date Sep 24 @ 4:26 AM

Poll closing date Oct 1 @ 11:59 PM

07BONLH | LHMTL