On Saturday night, during the 2nd intermission, the Dallas Stars unveiled a brilliant feature on the rebranding process leading up to the reveal of the new logo, jerseys and colors in June of 2013. That reveal was the final step in a very long and arduous process that started almost immediately upon Tom Gaglardi purchasing the team and lasted nearly two years, and very nearly resulted in the Stars becoming a much different-looking team than the one we have now.
The video is a great look behind the scenes at the process, which also reveals a number of the actual mock-ups and ideas that were being discussed. This is something you don’t get to see every day in the world of sports, and we’re lucky the Stars decided to share this with fans.
When this process started, we knew that the Stars were exploring nearly any and all possibilities — the jerseys and logos at the time were dated and the colors were as monochromatic and boring as you could find the NHL, a far cry from the great jerseys the Stars had enjoyed in years past. That included not only a brand new logo, but also brand new colors.
The video reveals what Daryl Reaugh had hinted at, that the Stars were exploring a red, white and blue color scheme to match those of the other franchises in town. If fact, the video shows that Razor and Ralph Strangis were the biggest proponents of this color change, and as you’ll see from the screen grabs below it’s clear that the Stars very seriously explored this possibility.
In the end, what was heard the loudest was the voice of the fan — and Mike Modano. The fans were adamant that the Stars must remain green and that green needed to be the main color; the Stars understood what the fans wanted and needed and eventually landed on the Victory Green color scheme we know and love today. This was definitely the right decision.
It’s clear what was first decided was likely the new logo, and the color scheme was then the big point of contention.
What is interesting is that Jim Lites mentions two camera tests of actual mock jerseys being the deciding factor and while you don’t get to see the entire actual jersey, we know that the Stars came very close to deciding on a Navy & Gold color scheme that apparently looked pretty amazing, and had many who saw the mock up very excited.
Ultimately, Victory Green won out.
I’ve grabbed some screen shots of the most noteworthy logos and ideas shown in the video, which you can find below.
The video mentions how the Stars began with just putting ideas up on a white board…I sort of like the “Dallas Stars Hockey Club” idea. That’s interesting.
Here’s the first true look at what the red, blue and white color scheme would look like.
These look like practice jerseys at first, but you can see here how they were really looking at implementing the “Texas Flag” look into the jersey.
More of that “Texas Flag” aesthetic.
These look like Columbus Blue Jackets colors, almost.
This would not have looked good, at all.
Now, THIS is close to amazing and you wonder why the Stars decided to not include gold. I’ve heard that the gold in this scheme didn’t work well on camera tests and that the Stars were looking for a unique blend of green rather than the darker one you see above. This would have been interesting, however.
Finally, here’s a brief glimpse of that Navy and Gold scheme they mocked into an actual jersey. You get another brief look in the video, but it would have been interesting to see what this looked like in the actual camera tests.
You can see the full video below. I highly recommend giving this a watch if you missed it, as there are some great things in there about the process of putting these together that you shouldn’t miss.