A little over six weeks ago the Sabres began revealing swatches of their redesigned third jersey via social media.
While the anticlimactic tactic seemed to annoyingly taunt most, it was sort of intriguing to follow the progress – especially when they unveiled the captain and assistant letters for the third jersey a few weeks ago. (Which are still pretty awesome.)
However, when Steve Ott (@ottN9NER) revealed the first full shot of the Sabres alternate uniform on twitter it wreaked of hoax.
Ott seems to be standing in the Sabres equipment room with a co-conspirator just revving up Sabres fans looking to build momentum to the final grand to-do where the Sabres official account swoops in and saves the day with the actual jersey. Unfortunately it was not.
The Sabres official twitter and instagram accounts followed Ott’s tweet with a release of the jersey, in a manner that’s as unofficial as official gets.
There was no Photoshop or professional photography, no back drop or fancy graphics. It was as if the social media director took the pictures with his phone, cropped them into Pic-Stitch and fired them off into the social media atmosphere in order to save some face after Ott blew up their spot an hour earlier.
The reactions have been collectively negative aside from the occasional ‘don’t take this too seriously, it’s just a jersey’ commenter. They could have at least slapped the cool “C” on Ott before they did it.
Realistically the Sabres know that whatever they put out there, their devoted fan base will consume it, just like the slug before this, and the red, black and white buffalo head before that.
Whether it’s to small children, fans of roller hockey, or tailgaters who might puke down the front of their jersey anyway, this hideous practice jersey will sell.
To me it’s another monstrosity in a long line of tactics used to sell more jerseys and they will most likely rid of the design in a few seasons anyway, but still, I’d rather not have to put up with watching a bad team wearing a bad jersey.
If the Sabres young guns don’t step up and make this jersey and the front office look good by exceeding their age to potential ratio, we can look forward to taking the Islanders spot at the bottom of the league in both the standings and jersey ranking.
Photo #1: The second is the picture the Sabres twitter account released today after Ott tweeted the original picture leak.