Crimes of Fashion

                Mercifully September is right around the corner, and as I prepare to flip my calendar from Christopher Higgins and Sean Avery to Henrik Lundqvist, I’m looking forward to finally having something to talk about. Today several of the New York Rangers participated in pre-training camp workouts. The Traverse City tournament starts on September 11^th and then New York Rangers training camp opens six days later on September 17^th. We’re almost there!

                Since the signing of Alexander Frolov and Glen Sather managing to jettison Donald Brashear and Patrick Rissmiller to Atlanta, there’s been not much going on here in Rangers’ world. There hasn’t really been much of a peep as to how Marc Staal’s contract negotiations have been going, or if they have been going at all (and while hockey is not football, that may not be such a bad thing seeing this New York Jets-Darrelle Revis thing play out). I’ve even given up on looking in my mailbox on a daily basis for my invitation to the Wade Redden “bon voyage” party that we all seem to think will be thrown prior to the season opener in Buffalo on October 9^th.

                August has been pretty stingy in terms of activity, so I guess you take any little iota of information of any kind that you can get your hands on. Lundqvist is in the September issue of Vogue? Great, although he looks a bit odd in uniform, pads and all, in a photo with stylized women in desperate need of a good meal. Third jerseys are coming back for the Rangers in November? Well …

                We’ve been down that road before with the Rangers when they had the “liberty” jerseys. I remember when they were first revealed I wasn’t crazy about them, but they did grow on me over time (the base navy blue version, not the base white version which for some reason I found bothersome) and yes, I do own one. This news of a third jersey has led to speculation that it’s going to be some sort of retro design from the past (the road blues with “NEW YORK” on the diagonal seems to have gotten a lot of attention as a possibility) rather than a completely new look.

                Going into a team’s past to get that third jersey is not a bad idea. Maybe it’s my “Original Six” bias here, but there’s just something really cool to me about seeing those uniforms of the past being brought back to life, such as Chicago and Detroit have for their Winter Classic participation. (My exception to this is the pajama-striped uniforms Montreal hauled out for their 100^th anniversary festivities. Yeah, it was nice to see my initials inside the leaf crest on the front, but the stripes head-to-toe were just too much on the eyes. And the maple leaf did scream more their rivals to the west than Les Habitants.)

                Then there are some who go to the drawing board and come up with a new idea. Some are visually home runs (in the current run, I think Minnesota and St. Louis did great jobs), some not so much (sorry Florida, it’s not so much that it’s a bad uniform, but you look like you’re trying too hard to replicate Pittsburgh’s third uniform. And let’s not even go there when it comes to the “Mighty Duck” leaping out of the ice circa 1995-96 or the Los Angeles Kings’ effort that same season, with a sash-like stripe across the torso and a creepy king head on the chest). But I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

                Of course in the end, it’s all about the bottom line, and not just with third jerseys, but even with the regular road and home looks. It’s about getting the fan to shell out cash and buy that jersey. A few of the “post-O6” teams in the league have been through a few changes in their regular uniforms. Not to pick on Buffalo, but I am going to use them as an example here. They abandoned their traditional blue-and-gold with the buffalo-with-sabres crest for a completely different logo and color scheme in 1996, only in 2006 to go back to the blue-and-gold scheme and a perplexing symbol that I have heard called everything from an amoeba to Barney Rubble’s hair to the universally termed “Buffaslug”. Reports are they will be using their current third jerseys, which evoke their original blue-and-gold uniforms as their home uniforms for their upcoming 40^th anniversary season. If you’re making changes to the uniform for a practical reason (such as when the Disney sold the Mighty Ducks and the movie branding just didn’t make sense given the new ownership) then it’s expected and it makes perfect, legitimate sense.  But those constant changes and those third jerseys, especially when a radical departure from what you expect, just for the sake of change, creates a lack of identity. I mean, the Rangers derived their nickname the Broadway Blueshirts because of their blue jerseys. Could you imagine them coming out on the ice in anything else, even if it were for only 10 games a year?

                And of course, as I’m finishing this up my whole “all quiet on the Rangers’ front” has been shattered as they have come to terms with former Buffalo Sabre Tim Kennedy for 1 year at $550,000.00. It’s a decent depth move, especially given that he’s only 24 and is coming with such a low price tag. It’s starting to get pretty crowded on the Rangers’ roster. It should get interesting in 18 days.