Islanders Make Plans for Brooklyn
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New third jersey will "speak to Brooklyn"
Everyone here wants to know what will happen to the New York Islanders when they move to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Will they keep their name? Keep their colors? Their jerseys? Or will they follow the NBA's Nets who moved from New Jersey to Brooklyn last year?
We may have finally gotten a definitive answer last week. It's an answer which balances the organization's internal desire to give the club a new feel for a new market with the desire among long time fans to avoid another Gorton's fisherman debacle.
Islanders Point Blank and other outlets reported on a press conference held by the team last Thursday as Isles training camp got underway in their future home. CEO Brett Yormark was quoted as saying, "[Owner] Charles [Wang] and I have decided that the Islander colors as they are today will be the same when they get here. The name will be the same."
That's two down. Same colors. Same name. A relief to many fans, for sure. Presumably, the logo will also be the same, but it sounds like the uniforms will undergo changes. This is from Islanders Point Blank:
Fans of the team would most likely agree that he came to the right decision, but the Barclays Center CEO does intend to add a patch to the home and away jerseys that identifies in Brooklyn. The patch would be placed around the shoulder area of the jersey. “We’re working with Charles and the league on that,” he said.
Yormark also intends to revamp the third jersey to appeal Brooklyn.
“What we will do is introduce a third jersey,” he said. “A second home jersey, and that is where we are going to get a little creative. That is where we will speak to Brooklyn in an authentic way.”
He did not, however, go into specific details as to what the new third jersey would look like.
Probably a safe bet it's black, given the rebranding of the Brooklyn Nets. And there has certainly been no shortage of black Islanders jersey ideas on the Icethetics Concepts page. To be fair, their current third jersey is black, but it hasn't really been a hit among fans.
Also, the Islanders' website was recently redesigned with an aesthetic that's more in line with Nets' look — same font and lots of black and white.
By the way, if anyone wants to mock up a Brooklyn shoulder patch for the Isles, I'd be happy to add it to the Concepts page. Meantime, do you think the Islanders are doing the right thing here?