One of my personal pet peeves about the uniform situation doesn't look like it will be resolved any time soon: the fact that the home team will once again wear their dark colors, as it has been since the 2003-04 season.
For the life of me, and I have an advanced academic degree, I have no clue why Gary Bettman says he wants the casual fan to be drawn to the game, especially in newer markets, and can't even get the simple "home = light; road = dark" equation down properly.
Granted, in the NFL it is common for the home team to choose their darker jerseys if that has been the traditional choice, And, it is an increasing trend in baseball and basketball to trot out alternate unis that are not of a lighter shade. Still, to my recollection, not many fans of either sport have a hard time upon viewing, to discern which team is the home club.
I've encountered many hockey fans who don't know, and sometimes I'm not sure myself unless I take a second closer glance at the TV screen to see where the "PHI" is positioned on the score crawl.
For my current job, this time of year is the mad season. Along with the NHL, I am watching the baseball playoffs, NFL, college football, and soon to be NBA contests. While our credo is putting out the most accurate and timely sports information on the web, it is more difficult even for a 25-year watcher like myself to immediately guess who's the home team when I have 2 or 3 games going on at once.
And yes, I have made the mistake (and caught heat for it) of choosing the wrong home team in my wraps based on a brief jersey glance if I had a more important game to write at the same time.
Plus, I can't count how many times older relatives and parents of friends have watched games and have questioned assertions that the Flyers are home, while wearing their black uniforms.
I said it before and I'll say it again. Switching home and road is a cute idea. Really. It was cool when the NHL decided on the switch after the All-Star Game in 1992 for its 75th anniversary. It wasn't so cool back in 2003 when the reason given for the change was that it would be easier on travel for equipment personnel.
It's also just hard-wired into our consciousness that light colors are worn at home. My last NHL game I attended as a fan two years ago, I overheard a young kid ask his parents why the Flyers were wearing black when they're at home. He couldn't have been older than 6 or 7.
It's long past time the league at least does this right, even as it's off shipping Western Canadian farmboys to Africa trying to get kids there to learn the game in the off-season.
Puck Daddy blog over on Yahoo.com made a big, and hideous unveiling the other day of the Atlanta Thrashers' new alternate uniforms, seen below:
What could they possibly call this? A Burnt Sienna nightmare? Also, notice how none of the four players modeling the new threads looks thrilled.
I thought the primary colors were blue and white, with a little bit of tan and rust thrown in for lining...so now the franchise has their original home white (for the road), the blue monstrosities for home, and these crimes against nature for selected contests.
Fellow division rivals Tampa Bay along with the Philadelphia Flyers had their design leaked also, which looks a bit better over here.
I personally thought Tampa should have switched over to electric blue for their home (road?) jerseys years ago. Black = badass back in the 1990's, and it's kinda played out as we approach the 2010's. Time to put some flash and color back in the dark unis. Not a big fan of the shortened nickname, either. Maybe they could have gone with a single white bolt silhouetted with an accent of black against the blue background.
The Flyers new third jersey, well...you can't really mess with tradition. I mean, the club made a concession back in 2002 to bring an orange-dominated sweater back to the team, but the hue along with the white, silver, black and weird cut-outs on the arms didn't quite settle with me.
This time, they've got the old-school white name panel with black script against the classic original design. One minor detail is, the shade of orange more closely resembles the one worn in 1980-81 than the Broad Street Bullies era - which was of a deeper orange probably mixed with red.
Among the other misfires, Carolina has gone with a boring black design, and the Blues added a misplaced Gateway Arch on their navy blue shirt. Buffalo somehow managed to mangle their old purple-and-gold design with modern striping and underarm panels.
Word is that the Penguins are coming out with a variant on their old powder-blue threads from the early 70's, and it's already been revealed that the Oilers are using a 1980's replica road jersey for their alternates.
Let's hope the rest of the new generation are a bit more muted but colorful than the original batch of third jerseys foisted on the public in the mid-90's.
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