Oilers Win Draft Lottery and Central Division Rebrand

Tonight, the Edmonton Oilers won the draft lottery to move from the 2nd overall pick to the 1st.  This will be the 3rd consecutive year that they have the first overall pick.  As a partial Oilers fan, I will say my opinion.  The Oilers could choose to pick the best player available (Nail Yakupov), or choose a player that fits their needs (A Defenseman).  I think they should choose Yakupov.  Yes call me crazy.  The Oilers already have a lot of offense and need to improve defensively.  My reasoning is that if the Oilers pass on Yakupov, they will regret it.  Yakupov will turn out to be a star in this league.  Defense often takes longer to mature than defense.  So if they choose Ryan Murray, not only will they be wasting they're win in the lottery, but he will take a while to mature, which could delay the rebuild.  The Oilers do have great defensive prospects in David Musil, Colton Teubert, and Oscar Klefborn.  If the Oilers want more defense, they could choose to trade Gagner, Hemsky, Eberle, Hall, Nugent-Hopkins, or Yakupov himself.  I'm not saying I would be furious if the Oilers took Murray, but I would prefer Yakupov.  Both are excellent players.

I will be away from Thursday to Monday, so my next post will likely be next Tuesday.  It will either be the Pacific Division, or the Northeast Division.  Now onto concepts.  As you know, I am redoing the NHL's jerseys.  Today I will show you my concepts for the Central Division.

This one is based off a concept from the Blues Redesign contest at HJC.  I
can't remember who it was from but i just remembered the striping.  The
stripes are supposed to be guitar strings.

I made the road one a while ago.  I think it's a cool idea for the road, but I
don't think it works for the home.

This is a fauxback to when the Hawks wore just black and white.  

I think the Wings jerseys are perfect because their so plain and simple.  I
wouldn't change anything.  The only thing I did was used my wheel logo.
I think it looks better with their current logo, but I just wanted to see my
logo on a jersey.

I think the Preds wordmark would work very good as a primary logo.  So I
used it here.  It's basically the Bruins jersey with different striping.  The
shoulder yoke design is kind of like the teeth on a saber-toothed tiger.

Quebec City New Arena

Quebec is getting a new arena, which means we're one step closer to getting another Canadian team.  I wonder if there's going to be another relocation for next season.

Rylen, who is new to making jersey concepts sent in a pretty nice blues fauxback.  My only concern is that I think there might be a bit too much striping.  It could be cool for a winter classic or an alternate though.

Thomas made his first concept on the new template and sent it into me.  It is based on their alternate.  He changed the white stripes to vintage white, and took away the silver outline.  He also changed the shoulder yoke from white to light blue.

The Saint John Seadogs of the QMJHL are basically wearing the Buffalo Sabres old Buffaslug jersey.  They are the Memorial Cup Champions and I think they need their own look.  Something that is simpler.  If you haven't noticed, I hate it when minor league teams copy NHL teams jerseys, unless they are the farm team.  So I made this...