Stingrays partner with Icethetics for design contest!

/

Last week the South Carolina Stingrays and Icethetics announced a contest to design the team's 25th anniversary logo and alternate jersey! If you want to know more, go to icethetics.co/stingrays.

The new look, to be selected by the Icethetics community, will be used during the 2017-18 season. But back to that in a second.

For 2016-17, the Stingrays will use their third jersey to pay tribute to their NHL affiliate, the Washington Capitals. Earlier this month the club unveiled its new Caps-themed sweater.

The two franchises have worked together for more than a decade. The Stingrays have supplied the Capitals with great goaltending talent in recent years including Braden Holtby and Philipp Grubauer.

The more exciting jersey news actually involves Icethetics and its talented community of designers!

This summer, the team approached me about helping with a 25th anniversary jersey to be used a year from now. (Lots of lead time is needed to get the jerseys and other merchandise produced.) It sounded like an amazing opportunity!

But it's actually not the first time Icethetics and the Stingrays crossed paths.

During the 2007-08 season, I ran an ECHL logo tournament where readers voted for their favorite designs. The Stingrays promoted it on their website.

But 2007-08 was the year before the redesign that gave the Stingrays one of the best logo packages in all of minor league hockey. At that time they were wearing one of the worst. They faced the Bakersfield Condors in their first poll and lost. By the way, the Stockton Thunder went on to win the tournament. I'm curious how it would go today.

The Stingrays relied heavily on their 15th anniversary logo that year. It set the stage for the redesign to come. Then five years later, they marked their 20th anniversary with a logo that wasn't quite as tasteful. I'll just say it. There was a lot of text. A lot.

But as they move on to 25 years, they're excited to see what our talented readership can come up with. I know we're going to blow them away! And I hope it will lead to more teams enlisting Icethetics in the future.

And lastly, I have to send a shoutout to Rob Concannon, Jeffrey Zucker and Zack Fisch from the Stingrays for making all this happen!