HbD News: New Lightning Third Jerseys Announced

By JVDW
In HbD Breakdown
Sep 29th, 2014
4 Comments

Lightning-thirds-636The Tampa Bay lightning released their new third jerseys on Saturday. Unfortunately, it’s unspectacular. More than that, it’s like the Lightning went all Tobey McGuire in Spiderman: emo.

(Just a reminder, all italicized links (like this one) will show images without leaving the page. Non-italicized links will go to articles on a new page.)

First of all, there’s the black. Regular readers of the site will know how I feel about black sweaters. For those who don’t know, when you’re playing a sport on a blank sheet of white ice against the other team which – 99 times out of 100 – is wearing white, black is the least interesting jersey to choose. Think Sharks/Kings from last year’s playoffs. Monochromatic and visually boring. The best thing that came from the Sharks’ epic and historical collapse is that they’ve ditched those black jerseys for good (in the playoffs anyway). See, there’s always a silver lining.

Back to Tampa Bay, the black is certainly a historically-accurate choice for the franchise, which was the colour of their regular jerseys until  2011. But, at least those jerseys had some blue on them. This is almost entirely black, because blue isn’t cool enough, right Tobey? Black is just so, you know, cool, because I’m a moody and deeply emotional intellectual who wants to look more intimidating and cool. Did I mention black is totally cool? Because it’s totally cool.

Lightning-thirds

(My apologies if you’re now, or ever were, emo. You’re absolutely free to wear what you want and think what you want, but if you’re playing on a hockey team, emo isn’t really a great look to go for.)

The only blue on these Tampa jerseys are an ultra-thin line on the cuffs, the collar and on the logo patches on the shoulders. Otherwise, it’s all black and white.

Speaking of the white, do those shoulder yoke stripes and thin white line along the bottom of the jerseys look familiar? They should, they’re incredibly similar to the last hockey team you saw on the ice of a meaningful game. Not to say that the Kings own that cuff-to-shoulder yoke outline look (as other teams use it), but they’re the only one to do that exact same thing in a black jersey. Like it or not, it’s like the Lightning are trying to replicate a team they look up to by wearing what they wear. That seems very emo. Right Lucius?

And now we can move to the crest. I’ve never liked the use of nicknames on jerseys, from the Bolts to the Sens. Tampa, your team is called the Lightning. Only sports broadcasters call you the Bolts trying to sounds younger than they actually are. Sorry, you’re not happy with the name you were given? You want to change it to something that seems more cool and clever? That seems very emo. Right Prince?

The only team that’s allowed to get away with that are the New York Knicks. Because no one actually called them the Knickerbockers anyway.

So, these jerseys are a bit of an emotional let-down. At least they were trying to be minimalist with the jerseys, but it went too far in that direction, with nothing here to even get the least bit excited about. Boring, stolen, non-sensical, whatever.

If you need me, I’ll be in the corner, staring broodily at you.

 

Agree? Disagree? Am I being too hard on emo? Probably. But give me shit about it in the comments below.

 

 

 

4 Responses to “HbD News: New Lightning Third Jerseys Announced”

  1. Mike Bonn says:

    I totally agree (in fact discussed it at length on my latest podcast – Scuttlepuck). I could live with it if the space between the two white lines going down the sleeves were blue, to match the socks, or if the main part was blue with black down the sleeve. My main problem is that they decided a few years ago to go just blue and white (too similar to Leafs in my opinion), now they are black blue and white again. Pick your team colours and go with them. I really hate when teams make third jerseys that use colours that aren’t normally part of the team’s identity. eg. When Florida came out with the navy / baby blue thirds, they were great looking sweaters but made no sense in the context of the Panthers. I realize there is history here, but it seemed they made a strong statement to drop the black and now they have reversed it. I’d actually like to see some black in their current home and aways to create some visual difference from the Leafs and it would then make these thirds (with some added blue) more consistent.

    When you see the Lightning in highlights, or when they first come on TV this year, you will immediately think “Leafs” or “Kings” until you see it for a few seconds. Personally, I think that is bad for the team.

    Love the blog.

    • Admin says:

      Totally agree. It seems odd to dump the black, then bring it back again. It can sometimes work, like the green in the Canucks jerseys, which is nowhere on their logo. But the addition of the green actually differentiated themselves from the rest of the league, which, as you said in your comment, the Lightning have actually done the opposite of. It’s too bad.

  2. […] discussed jersey, but it’s still not very good. If you want a full breakdown of this jersey, I did a full article about them when they were released. If you want the short version, stick with me […]

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