This might be one of my most delayed news articles of all time. I apologize and very soon you’ll understand what I’ve been up to for the past few weeks. For now, let’s dive right in.
Almost a month ago now—on Nov. 9—the AHL’s Henderson Silver Knights officially unveiled their uniforms during special live broadcast called Reveal Knight. That was six months after the announcement of the team’s name.
The Silver Knights are the American Hockey League affiliate of the Vegas Golden Knights and are set to begin play in the 2020-21 season—whenever that may be. Currently, the AHL is aiming for a start date of Feb. 5, 2021, but of course the ongoing pandemic is sure to make that a moving target.
No matter when the puck drops, the team will need to have sweaters ready to go. And that they do.
The internal graphic design crew for the Golden Knights, who created the logo, was responsible for the uniforms as well. And if they look familiar, they should. After looking at hundreds of concepts, the team thought it best to model their sweaters on the Golden Knights’ look—sans the red accents.
A noteworthy feature of the design is the lighter-than-usual dark jersey. Henderson will wear a gray sweater—not unlike the San Antonio Rampage, the predecessor of this franchise. But that wasn’t necessarily the intent. The fact that the team is named the Silver Knights informed those color choices.
Here’s a closer look at the detail of the silver sweater.
And here’s a graphic the team produced breaking down the features of the white jersey.
The backs of both jerseys use the same name and number treatments.
This design has the dual benefit of looking good and saving on customization costs. The Silver Knights equipment managers won’t have to handle two sets of letters and numbers since the exact same design is used for both jerseys.
I like the aesthetic of a dark name plate on a lighter colored jersey anyway. The fact that it’s necessary to make the gold letters stand out doesn’t take anything away from that for me.
In wrapping up this quick post, I just wanted to point out that one of the Golden Knights designers who worked on these sweaters is long time Icethetics concept contributor Matt McElroy—who also got to do a little modeling work, as you can see here.
A career as a hockey player may not have been in the cards for him, but a career as hockey designer is really taking off.
By the way, check back later this week for a big announcement about the future of Icethetics!
