***UPDATE (Aug. 31, 10:35 a.m. EDT): RECEIVED THIS NOTE TODAY FROM A LICENSED STORE OWNER WHO HAS SEEN THE NEW LEAFS JERSEY.
"Exact same shirt as last year, minus, TML shoulder patches, bottom stripes are gone, (sleeves stripes remain). Silver twill is gone. Number font is the same as last year, block style, basically Marlies lettering -- blue, white blue, and white blue white. Names remain one colour as per last year. Very, very plain."
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TORONTO (Aug. 30) -- There will not be a Washington or Vancouver-type overhaul of the Maple Leafs' new Reebok jerseys, expected to be unveiled the first week of training camp (Sep. 13-20). NHL clubs are re-working their uniforms to various degrees for the 2007-08 season, in conjunction with Reebok's new league-wide sponsorship. Several teams have taken the opportunity to drastically change the designs that were in place last season. Washington, for example, has gone back to its original color scheme of a predominantly red jersey with blue and white trim -- introduced when the Capitals joined the league for the 1974-75 campaign. In recent years, the Caps have worn either black or dark-blue jerseys, with gold and white trim. Vancouver has also returned, full-time, to its original color pattern of blue, green and white. As displayed on Wednesday, the Canucks will maintain the current "Orca Bay" logo, but will change from dark-blue, red and white jerseys worn in recent years to the blue and green combination that the team unveiled upon joining the NHL for the 1970-71 season.
The Leafs will stay pretty much the same. While the design of the jersey will be slightly altered, the club will not tinker with its blue and white color scheme. Nor will the Leafs dip into their last Stanley Cup dynasty for the uniform's primary logo. It will remain as it's been since Harold Ballard re-worked the crest in 1970. The nine-point emblem (with "TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS" printed in a straight-line font) will not be replaced by the more stylish "stem" (or 35-point) logo of the 1960s ("TORONTO" being displayed in a dome-like curvature) -- a time when the Maple Leafs were frequently winning championships. The stem logo had been re-introduced on the club's third jersey of recent years: the predominantly white uniform with blue shoulder piping that was a virtual copy of the jersey the Leafs wore in road games from 1963-64 to the end of the 1966-67 regular season.
Still unknown is whether faint silver lining around the numbers will be a part of the new design. Silver was added to the Leaf jersey for the first time in 2000, the same year the club replaced the "stem" shoulder-patch logo with an integrated "TML" patch (prompting one of the wisest cracks of all time -- Rosie DiManno of the Toronto Star referring to the "TML" emblem as "looking like something that is carved into Charles Manson's forehead"). I was never a big fan of it, either.
The Leafs open training camp two weeks from today -- Thursday, September 13th -- with medicals at Ricoh Coliseum. The first on-ice session at Ricoh will take place Friday morning, the 14th. The club's annual Blue-White intrasquad game will be played this year in Oshawa on Sunday afternoon, Sep. 16th. After its charity golf tournament on Monday the 17th, the Leafs will fly to Edmonton late in the day for their pre-season opener against the Oilers on Tuesday the 18th. The team will play Phoenix the following night at the MTS Centre in Winnipeg before returning for a re-match with the Coyotes at the Air Canada Centre, Sep. 20th.
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