For the past two seasons, the Buffalo Sabres have been the laughingstock of the NHL. Not only because of how terrible they’ve been on the ice (well, maybe) but also because of their visually offensive third jerseys.
The Sabres alternate sweaters were doomed from the start, with their piece-by-piece unveiling only serving to anger fans and eventually resulting in a rushed, unprofessional reveal via cell phone photo that left just about every fan of the blue and gold underwhelmed if not dumbfounded.
To put it another way, when your jersey is best known by the nickname “Turdburger”, it’s probably not very good.
Today, we in the Sabres blogging community look to put an end to that. Over the past week, a number of bloggers led by Ryan Wolfe of Sabres Hockey Central and Chris Ostrander of Two in the Box have decided that we, the Sabres fans, should have our voices heard in the search for the inevitable replacement. We should be able to offer our input directly to the team we know and love.
We should work together to help design a new Sabres third jersey.
I’ll let Ryan explain:
For the past few years, we have been told that the Buffalo Sabres organization wants to hear our opinion. The organization wants to know what we want to see. Let’s show them what we want. Send your design for a new Buffalo Sabres third jersey to sabresconcept@gmail.com. After we obtain the entries, a vote will be held, and we’ll do our best to make sure it gets out to as many eyes as possible. The winner gets the instant gratification that Buffalo Sabres fans want to see their design come to real life.
Rules
We’re opening this contest for two weeks, meaning you have until Monday, March 23 to enter. Your proposed jersey must include a front and back, but we’ll take any type of file – JPG, TIF, PDF, heck, you can even use Microsoft Paint as long as your design is easy to see.
Send your entries to sabresconcept@gmail.com, and once we collect all the entries, we’ll put them all together in a new post and open the entries up to a vote. The winner will become a minor internet celebrity and will also get their choice of one of two New Era Sabres hats in either blue or black, shipped to your house. We’ll also promote the winning design in a many places as possible to try and get our voices heard in the search for something better.
You can get started by browsing these blank jersey templates, and feel free to be as creative as you like in your design.
Sabres fans have suffered through two of the worst seasons in NHL history and have had to stare at one of the ugliest sweaters ever designed on top of all that. With the team poised to turn things around next year on the ice, let’s try to make sure they look good doing it.
Thanks to Ryan (@wolfeshc) and Chris (@2ITB_Buffalo) for spearheading this project. Be sure to follow them on Twitter and check out their fine work at Sabres Hockey Central and Two in the Box.