DALLAS, TX – In their 22nd season, the Nashville Predators have pioneered a number of things for the league, all as a means of establishing their brand. Their game experience is among the best in all of sports and their regional appeal makes the club a widespread draw in the mid-south.
One of the other areas where they are applying creativity is in their base uniform as the primary choice when taking home ice. In 2011, the Predators chose a “gold” base for their home uniform, a shade once used when most teams used “white” as the home option. Los Angeles, Vancouver and even Pittsburgh used “gold” as the home “light color” option as recent as the 1980’s. The short-lived California Seals also used gold as their home option in their very limited existence.
Now the Predators are adding to their leading-edge reputation by going to a large scripted logo for the 2020 Winter Classic, one which might best be aligned with professional baseball teams. But if a team is going to play hockey outdoors in a football stadium, it just makes sense to blend the two qualities into one fantastic uniform.
When the Predators began collaborating with the NHL and adidas to design the jersey they’ll wear in the 2020 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic at the Cotton Bowl on New Year’s Day, there were a few things to keep top of mind.
First, every team that has ever participated in the League’s signature outdoor game since the first installment in 2008 has worn a uniform that channels the history of the respective franchise or city. That the team takes the ice at the Cotton Bowl, a venue which has enjoyed epic gridiron tilts, requires a hockey team to have to live up to a certain standard. Finish it up with the uniform having to stand alone with wide appeal and there is a real challenge at hand.
Since Nashville unveiled their Winter Classic uniform, it seems to have struck the perfect balance in city brand, football and reference to the Music City’s first professional hockey team, the Dixie Flyers.
“Designing it with adidas and the NHL to tie it back to the rich history that we have in our city going back to the Dixie Flyers, and then you combine that with the great tradition of college football of course in the Cotton Bowl…the idea was, ‘How do we take our great game and have fun with our logo a little bit, and that’s what the patch is for,'” Predators President and CEO Sean Henry said. “It really makes you think you’re wearing a varsity jacket in the ’50s.”
The patch, which may eventually find itself on the front of a future alternate jersey, is a newly-designed tiger logo affixed to the left shoulder of the jersey that has a vintage feel. The ‘Nashville Predators’ script across the front of the sweater mimics the look of the Dixie Flyers and their jerseys back in the ’60s and early ’70s.
It’s an interesting mix of modern and classic with several components new to the Nashville pro jersey, a process of which took more than 18 months to develop, according to Henry.
“We probably had five or six different collaboration meetings. We’d send sketches, they’d send sketches, we’d tear them up, redraw them again and we did a lot of research because we did want to tie it back to that history. You want to pay the proper respect to our franchise, to the history that’s here, to the history of the Cotton Bowl, and of course the Stars as well. That’s the hardest part – we’re not just designing one jersey. We’re designing two jerseys that are really going to work well together. And I think we came up with that.
“It was one of those things where you change it, and change it, and change it, but when we finally came up with first the [tiger head] and then the script it was just like, ‘Oh my gosh, let’s just stop now. It’s not going to get better.’ I was absolutely in love.”
Henry says the jerseys will make their on-ice debut on New Year’s Day, of course, but the plan is for the Predators to wear them for two additional games later in the season.
Dennis Morrell has a lengthy background in the great game as a hockey writer, photographer, goalie coach, player and currently active USA Hockey-certified referee with over 1,000 games in his striped jersey. His passion for the game began in the early 70s with his first glance at skaters in Clayton’s Shaw Park. He can be reached at dennis.morrell@prohockeynews.com and you can follow him on Twitter at DMMORRELL.
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