I've got a few things to talk about this morning. I'll start with the IceHL. I had to disqualify a bunch of team names that were up for rating in the Central Division. It was pointed out that several of them have already been used by obscure or defunct pro teams.

I asked that you guys not submit ineligible names since I don't have the time to search everything submitted. Anyway, some of you may want to go back and adjust your ratings based on the names that were disqualified. There are links to those pages in the pollbar.

In other Icethetics related news, we surpassed the million-hit mark. Did it in under three months too. Thanks for continuing to check in, everyone. According to my stats, we've had over 400,000 unique visitors following Icethetics in the last three months. You guys are the reason I do this every day. Thanks again!

...
SANFORD'S MASK GETS PAINTED
Vancouver Canucks goalie Curtis Sanford decided to wear a fan-designed goalie mask this season. And after choosing his favorite last week, it's now been painted. The team's official web site had photos of the new mask.

It doesn't quite look how I thought it would, but I think it's still a great looking mask. I like the green eyes at the top.

...
REBRANDING THE NHL & PROJECT: IHA
Been getting a lot of questions about both of these. First, I can tell you I've talked with Matt and since school and work — designing logos — have him very busy and without much free time, it may be about six weeks before we see his Blues rebrand. Hope you don't mind waiting a little longer. If you do, too bad.

Nicolas, creator of the IHA, will have a statement for everyone later in the week regarding the future of the league we designed logos for here at Icethetics. At that point we'll also begin accepting logo submissions for the league itself. The IHA will need its own logo as well.

...
NO THIRD JERSEY NEWS
Over the weekend, the Sabres and Blues unveiled their new third jerseys but I was keeping an eye on the rest of the league to see if anyone else would have theirs on display at various fan events. The Senators, Coyotes, Blackhawks and Lightning all held festivities over the weekend but none showed a third jersey. We'll probably have to wait until November for most of them.

...
FAKE THIRD JERSEY NEWS
I've been getting a lot of emails from people saying they've found pictures of all the new third jerseys on various message boards. Well, what they're seeing are the concepts created by JerseyDatabase.com based off Howard Berger's descriptions. I'm writing this hoping to get those emails to stop.

Let's take a look at the concepts JB.com did versus the actual jersey — all of which they have on their site. We'll start with the Hurricanes.

Berger wrote about stars across the bottom but we know the images he had were really bad quality so it was probably difficult to make out. Though I think seeing dots around the sweater, it would've been a better guess to stick with the storm flag design. Next, the Bruins.

It seems this concept wasn't based entirely off Berger but maybe a little wishful thinking. The main differences are the drawstring collar, the gold stripe at the bottom and the word BRUINS in the logo. Berger never said it would be the BOSTON logo and the earlier images we saw kind of confirmed that. Now the Sabres.

Berger did say it would be a throwback but the low quality images probably precluded him from noticing the slight modifications. And finally, the Blues.

For this, I'm betting Berger was looking at something similar to the image I posted on Saturday. Because of the terrible quality of the image, the jersey appears to have black stripes on it and the gold's been washed out entirely. It's also hard to tell that the ends of the sleeves are white.

So there it is. JerseyDatabase.com appears to be basing their concepts off of good descriptions but these are by no means the actual jersey designs. For that, we'll have to keep an eye out the next few months. I'll be here keeping track of all of it.