Three-Year Cycles

If there's one thing that happens far too often in minor-league hockey, it's the changing of the clothes that teams wear. Each year, there seems to be a handful of teams that decide to change their looks by introducing new jerseys or completely redesigning their look. And we're not even talking all the promotional jerseys they wear. Sometimes, the chance comes by necessity as a team changes ownership or affiliation, but often it seems to be on the whim of the franchise. Perhaps this helps them generate key revenue that the team needs, but it's a big ask of their fans to continue to update their wardrobes with the new looks every few years. The ECHL's Orlando Solar Bears are one of those teams, and they seem to be on a three-year jersey refresh cycle.

Here is the new look for the 2019-20 Orlando Solar Bears.

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There's nothing overly innovative here, although that orange alternate jersey will likely earn comments about "pylons on the ice". The purple-and-orange has long been the chosen colours of the Solar Bears, and the home and road jerseys work well with the designs and the colours. Numbers are easy to read, the jerseys have traditional stripes to help break up the uniform components, and they feel like hockey jerseys from an aesthetics standpoint.

It seems that this change may have coincided with an affiliation change as the Solar Bears moved on from the Toronto Maple Leafs to become the ECHL affiliate of the Tampa Bay Lightning in late August of 2018. There likely wouldn't have been enough time for a jersey redesign that close to the start of the ECHL season, so perhaps this change is related to that. The problem I have with this change, however, is that the Solar Bears just updated their uniforms in 2015-16! Here's what they wore for the last three seasons.

There's clearly less orange on the old jerseys, but I like the understated uniforms that the Solar Bears were using. While that white jerseys seems like it could use a shoulder yoke, the double chest stripe works for me. The black alternate is unnecessary regarding the colour when the purple and teal combination likely could have been used for the alternate base colour, but those jerseys are no more, so I'm not going to take them to task for that.

But hold the phone, folks, because the Orlando Solar Bears were also affiliated with the Minnesota Wild and Houston Aeros in 2012-13, and they came up with new jerseys at that point as well! Here are the jerseys worn by the Solar Bears in 2012 for the three years they were affiliated with the Wild!

As you can see, these jerseys, made by SP, mimicked the Reebok apron strings while still using sublimation to work the teal colour in. The home and road jerseys used different logos, and there were only two jerseys when they were introduced. Note this because it will change midway through 2013. I don't like the fact that there are no stripes, and the weird angles that seem to trace a player's hips just make these look awful. I'm not a fan, but to each their own.

The reason I asked you to note the change in 2013 is because the Solar Bears introduced this alternate jersey, seen to the right, on December 28, 2013 with some fanfare. These jerseys seemed to polarize fans - either you like them or you don't - but I think they're a good alternate jersey because it grabs a colour that Orlando used as an accent and makes it front-and-center. The sun is also something that Orlando is known for, and using the sun to make it an "O" really accentuates the "solar" part of Solar Bears. Personally, it's a very clever design, and I'm a fan. Others, however, didn't like it and it died in 2015 when the team swapped affiliations and had their jerseys redesigned.

As seen with the Solar Bears, the NHL affiliation changes have prompted new jersey sets for the franchise. Perhaps their affiliation with the Lightning will be longer than three seasons and we won't see a change in 2022 for the club, but nothing is ever written in stone in minor-pro hockey. If there's one thing that Solar Bears fans can be sure of, it's that they likely need new jerseys if they want to continue to support their team as they currently look.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!