Two in the Box

The Sabres will arrive at the end of a long, winding path to once again wearing royal blue jerseys when the officially unveil their uniforms Tuesday morning.

It’s an event that fans have been clamoring for years and the organization is finally adjusting course 24 years after first abandoning their original color scheme.

The Pegulas and Sabres have made it awfully easy to take shots at their ineptitude recently and it’s easy to assume that these new jerseys will fall flat. However, knowing that Eric Bodamer’s guidance on the Winter Classic and 50^th anniversary uniforms created such great designs and the added background of years of fan requests, I’m confident in saying there’s no way this thing goes sideways on them. Assuming Bodamer was part of the design process, his work with Adidas outweighs the Sabres recent jersey design missteps.

I’m looking forward to Tuesday morning. Knowing that the team is going back to royal blue, my wishlist of features on the jerseys are short. I’d love to see the team move away from the bland block numbers and towards something more contemporary, that they use the stylized crest and shoulder logos featured on the 2018 Winter Classic uniforms and I hope these uniforms finally mark the end of numbers on the front of Buffalo’s jerseys.

It’s a short list and I’m not going to be heartbroken if these are a little more traditional and wind up closer to the original set of uniforms. In the meantime, I took a little time to cook up a concept for home and away jersey’s that I’d personally like to see. It’s important that I stress that these are not a mockup or concept of what the Sabres will be unveiling. These are simply a set of jerseys that I feel would be a cool step for the team to take.

They’re both based off previous designs less than being any sort of original creation. So my level of involvement is equivalent to that of writing a Buzzfeed listicle. I just wanted to play around with a couple of ideas on a jersey set that would be different from what the club has been wearing while staying rooted in a traditional look and feel. These two templates do that well while also blending nicely with modern elements. I’m looking forward to your positive and negative feedback on these while we count down the last few hours until the Sabres drop their new jerseys on Tuesday morning.