The 2016-2017 NHL season is in the books. And with this conclusion, a franchise is born.
The league has officially grown from 30 teams to 31, as the city of Las Vegas is granted its first Big-4 professional sports team.
The Vegas Golden Knights must hit the ground running as they prepare for a hectic first month that includes a uniform unveiling, an expansion draft, the annual entry draft and free agency.
As the Golden Knights undergo their NHL baptism, the rest of the league is experiencing a change of their own. Adidas has taken over as the official outfitter of the NHL, replacing Reebok.
With this change, Adidas revealed sneak-peaks of their new uniforms via social media with the hashtag: #FormTheFuture
27 of the 31 teams have released these images, as we are still waiting on the Chicago Blackhawks, Montreal Canadiens, Pittsburgh Penguins and Toronto Maple Leafs.
But this edition of Uniforms of the Week will focus on the Golden Knights who prepare for their inaugural season.
It’s always interesting to observe how an expansion franchise chooses to brand oneself. The uphill battle expansion teams face is well documented, and Sin City is quite new to professional sports, particularly the spectacle of ice hockey.
Their objective may pertain to legitimization – going for a clean and traditional look.
Or perhaps they will look to turn some heads with a flashy or polarizing look.
Regardless of their strategy, stay tuned for its unveiling on Tuesday, June 20 and the subsequent reaction here at NMSports.net.
In the meantime, we can officially begin to speculate with Adidas’ sneak-peak.
From this tweet, we can assume that the team’s home uniforms will be steel grey, rather than black, Vegas gold or red.
Using EA Sports’ NHL 17, we can imagine a few possibilities for the Vegas Golden Knights’ new uniforms.
Note that the 2017-2018 season will feature no alternate uniforms, strictly home and away.
While red is unquestionably involved in Vegas’ color scheme, it is unclear to what extent. These two examples above take a liberal approach to the use of red.
These uniform sets take a more conservative approach to the usage of red, only utilizing it in the neck string.
And finally, I ditched the red altogether, focusing on the steel grey and gold.
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Let me know which one’s you like the best on Twitter.
Catch last weeks Uniforms of the Week, as well as the NHL’s successful venture into a nontraditional market and the NBA’s unprecedented parity concerns.
NM Sports 