Gladiators Add 10th Anniversary Jersey

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Photo from Gwinnett Gladiators official website

The ECHL's Gwinnett Gladiators will be sporting a special edition 10th anniversary sweater this season and fans can get their hands on one for the first time tonight when the club opens its home schedule.

The Gladiators are looking to their NHL affiliate, the Phoenix Coyotes, for inspiration, quite clearly. It's essentially the Coyotes' home sweater with some text on the front. That's right, text. My favorite. (Sorry, hope I didn't drip any of that sarcasm on you.)

It sounds like this won't be an alternate jersey so much as the Glads' go-to dark jersey this season. ECHL teams wear white and home and colors on the road until the midpoint of the season when they all do a big switch-a-roo. (It gives teams a chance to showcase both of their uniforms to fans in an effort to sell more of each.)

Here's what else the team had to say about it a couple weeks ago.

In honor of their 10th year in Gwinnett, the Gladiators have decided to commemorate the anniversary by introducing a new maroon jersey for the 2012-2013 season. Fans in attendance at this past Sunday’s pre-season game were privy to a special sneak peek at the new sweaters.

The Gladiators will wear them for Opening Weekend before their designation on road games as the "dark" sweater option per ECHL mandate. At the midway point of the season, member teams will switch their jerseys, and the Gladiators will finish the 2nd half of the year wearing their maroon sweaters at home.

In homage to the history of hockey, the jerseys have a decidedly vintage feel complete with lace-up neck and "Gwinnett" across the chest.

The right shoulder will bear the ECHL's 25th anniversary patch while the left will have the team's 10th anniversary patch. But whatever floats their boat, I suppose.

I have to say, the design is quite plain and really does nothing for me, but I'd rather hear what Gladiators fans think of it. Would you buy one? It turns out they'll actually be kind of a "limited edition" type deal since the team's contract with SP Apparel is ending and they don't want to be left with stuff they can't sell. (Does this also mean we'll see more new Gladiators jerseys in 2013?)

Gladiators Mark 10 Years in Georgia

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Before we dive in, two things: 1) I'm back. The The IceHL 2012 Yearbook — a labor of love and some intense work over the last few months — is finished! And 2) that means I'm getting back to the blog. And even though it's been a quiet year, I'm determined to find ways of keeping Icethetics interesting. Even if I have to make up news.

For today, however, I don't have to make anything up.

The ECHL's Gwinnett Gladiators unveiled their 10th anniversary logos last Thursday. During the 2012-13 season, they'll be celebrating "A Decade of Excellence and Achievement," as they put it. Of course that's ignoring the eight previous years the club spent in Alabama as the Mobile Mysticks.

The Gladiators primary 10th Anniversary Season Logo is a stylized number ten with the distinctive Gladiators head profile logo incorporated into the zero. It also features roman numerals along the side denoting the years of operation, 2003 to 2013. The Gladiators will also utilize a secondary logo that features a roman numeral "X" incorporating the classic "G" shield/sword logo version and stylized banner indicating the team’s tenure.

The Gladiators are affiliated with the Phoenix Coyotes. And most of the people at their games used to be Thrashers fans, right? There's gotta be a joke in there somewhere about fans getting shafted. I'm just not clever enough to find it.

Guys, the IceHL Yearbook was a huge weight off my shoulders and I'm tired of seeing this page so static. There's been a lot of news I haven't covered over the last month or so and it's my goal to put it here with new posts every day or at least every other day for the next several weeks.

After that? I don't know. Maybe we get some Top 10 lists going. We all like lists, right?

And let there be NHL hockey before 2013... please!

The Minor League Report

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It's been a busy week for me outside of Icethetics. So I have a bunch of minor league jersey news to get through this afternoon.

Checkers and Canes join forcesOn Wednesday, it was officially announced that the AHL's Albany River Rats will be moving to North Carolina this fall, at the urging of their NHL affiliate, Carolina Hurricanes.

The club has been sold to Michael Kahn, owner of the ECHL's Charlotte Checkers. The River Rats will begin play in 2010-11 in Charlotte under the Checkers name, competing in the American Hockey League.

It's not clear what will happen to the ECHL franchise and its players. Capital District Sports CEO Garen Szablewski is efforting a team back to Albany for 2010 — hoping for an AHL franchise, using the River Rats name. I don't know the odds of that happening but it does appear there will be a couple dozen ECHLers without a team to play for when all this goes through.

Why is this Icethetics news? It will mean a new logo and jerseys in the AHL. No word yet on whether they're keeping the ECHL look, but it's a good one so they probably will.

Glads dress as Knights on pink iceSpeaking of the Checkers, they're playing the ECHL's Gwinnett Gladiators this weekend, who are knocking out two promotions at once.

It's Pink in the Rink Weekend, where the ice has gotten a nice cotton candy-colored coating. And they're celebrating minor league hockey history in Georgia's capital by wearing black and powder blue throwback jerseys in honor of the old Atlanta Knights of the IHL.

Gladiators' Knights throwback jerseyAs you can see here, they've kept the logo pretty much the same, changing only the team name, obviously. If you want to see more pictures of this one-time jersey, check out the Gladiators on Facebook.

And for the record, the Knights hold a special place in my heart as they were the original minor league affiliate of my Tampa Bay Lightning. That team saw the likes of ex-Bolts such as Cory Cross, Stan Drulia, Shawn Chambers, Roman Hamrlik, and even Brent Gretzky.

They went to the playoffs all four years they spent in Atlanta and even won the Turner Cup as league champions in their second season of existence. Why that couldn't translate to wins for the big club is beyond me. But they moved to Quebec to become the Rafales in 1996 and folded after two seasons.

I promise to be less verbose for these last two items.

Rebels specialty jerseyThe WHL's Red Deer Rebels will be wearing specially-designed jerseys on Friday, February 19 for Jerseys Off Our Backs Night.

You can see it modeled here in the photo (right) by the Rebels captain Colin Archer.

The proceeds from the jersey auction will benefit Ronald McDonald House Central Alberta. If you want to watch a brief video about the event, the Red Deer Advocate has you covered.

Fans will be able to bid on jerseys throughout the game. Winners will be led down to center ice to claim their sweaty prize following the game.

And finally, the OHL's Sudbury Wolves held their Pink in the Rink event this week with great success. They raised over $30,000 for the Janis Foligno Foundation and breast cancer research.

The Wolves' web site claims this is a photo gallery, but I can't seem to make it work. If anyone else has any luck, let me know. In the meantime, there's this.