2011-2012 NHL Color Scales: Red & Blue

And so we have reached the final color scale. I do plan on releasing all of these on a single page so that people can have them or fiddle with them or whatever it is that people do when they are downloading pictures off the internet. Today we have the two largest scales in the Red and the Blue scales. People often talk about how overused these colors are in the league and this pair of scales really demonstrates how extensive the use of blue and red really are. It isn't terribly surprising since blue and red are often tested as the two most popular colors in the world. In case you're curious, orange is often picked as the least appealing color, go figure. If this is your first time looking at these scales I invite you to go back and take a look at the first two entries for the rest of the the scales in the series: Green, Purple, & Natural and Orange, Silver, & Gold.

And since both of these are so long, you can find them both after the bump if you navigated here via the main page.



Red Scale:

Nothing too drastic happened in the world of red this offseason, unless you want to include the Florida Panthers switching their home jerseys from blue to red. In this blue saturated league that is a welcome change, even if it is only a change to the second most popular color. Also, with the recent announcement that the Washington Capitals will be wearing their 2011 Winter Classic jerseys as thirds this year I got to tack on a new shade of red. It is remarkably similar to Chicago's primary red color although it is noticeably more saturated. And as I mentioned when we looked at the gold scale all Thrashers colors have been retired we've lost the dramatically named Capitol Copper... which is the same tone used by Phoenix as their primary color and Edmonton as accents on their thirds. So, super neat job there with your arbitrary color naming Atlanta. How'd that work out for you?














Blue Scale:


Now, we've finally arrived at the big one. Let's hit the subtractions real quick. With the Thrashers gone north, their poetically named Atlanta Midnight Blue (which is also the now retired blue from the recent Islanders jerseys) and Thrasher Ice Blue. I don't really know what either of them mean. The ice in Atlanta was pretty white and I wasn't aware that anyone living in massive cities bothered looking at the night sky long enough to figure out what it should be called. Now, additions! The Caps third jersey features the same blue favored by Montreal, the Islanders, Toronto, and Vancouver. It also means that ten teams in the league use just two shades of blue, and of those ten teams only two feature the shade on alternate jerseys. The other big additions are two new shades of blue from the Winnipeg Jets. They must have been tickled by the Thrashers' love of arbitrary color names since the two shades they introduced are known officially as Polar Night Blue and Aviator Blue. If you care enough to figure out which is which then you're probably a Jets fan and then... you know... ehh.... I originally reported that the darker shade was the same as one of the Big Two shades, but it is in fact darker. The light shade is similar to the  blue found of the Blue Jackets third jersey but they are noticeably different.

If at any point some color seems off or flat out wrong, then please email me at puckandpunk [at] gmail [dot] com. My goal is make this as accurate as possible and I'm always happy to accept input. Thanks