Knoxville's Going Nashville

If you know anything about me, you likely know that my disgust over teams using shortened names or nicknames on professionally-worn jerseys in sanctioned games doesn't sit well with me. We've seen a handful of teams do it - the Senators (Sens!), the Lightning (Bolts!), and the Hurricanes (Canes!) most notably - and it bothers me because team nicknames are used mostly in speech rather than in professional forums. One team that hasn't participated in this madness at the Nashville Predators (Preds!) thankfully, but it seems that their closest SPHL team will wear their nickname for them tomorrow night.

The Knoxville Ice Bears are situated some two-and-a-half hours from Nashville, and have zero affiliation with the NHL team outside of occupying the same state. Nashville has been pretty instrumental, however, in growing hockey within the state and in the south. The Ice Bears were founded four years after the Predators first skated onto the scene in 1998, and they've seen both success on the ice and at the box office in that time.

What makes this SPHL-NHL connection unique is that the Predators have never once turned the Ice Bears away when they approached the NHL team with an idea. The Predators hosted an Ice Bears' preseason game back in 2012 at Bridgestone Arena as part of bigger hockey event in Tennessee, and the Ice Bears seem to honour their NHL bretheren with a night devoted to the Predators every season.

That leads us to the logo above as the SPHL's Knoxville Ice Bears get set for Preds' Night tomorrow against the Huntsville Havoc!

We've seen Knoxville wear black Preds Night jerseys before as black is a component of the Ice Bears colour scheme, but this jersey is all sorts of crazy with the catfish logo containing the Nashville skyline, the striping on the sleeve to represent a guitar's strings, the guitar pick with KX on it rather than NP, and, of course, the "Preds" name plastered across the chest of the players which irks me.

The catfish logo is, to a degree, a very unique logo for the Ice Bears to choose since Nashville's desire to toss catfish on the ice during a game began in 2002 - the same year that the Ice Bears were founded! I'm not sure if the correlation is known by most Ice Bears fans, but that fact does make the catfish logo a little more palatable rather than just celebrating the tossing of catfish onto NHL ice.

The pick with KX is clearly a nod to Nashville's guitar pick they wear on their jerseys, and the font for the numbers is identical to what the Predators wear as well. Working that six blue-striped armband in on the jersey to represent a guitar seems like a bit of a stretch, but I won't lie when I say this black jersey needed a touch of colour somewhere. That "Preds" name, though? I can do without, thanks.

As stated above, the Ice Bears will wear these uniforms tomorrow night when the Huntsville Havoc visit, and the Predators will be giving these jerseys to fans as part of a jerseys-of-their-backs promotion. That promotion has been altered somewhat as no fans will be allowed onto the ice to receive their uniforms, and the lucky fans who win a jerseys will be mailed the jersey they won once they're cleaned and laundered to ensure that everything remains sanitized in this pandemic.

I feel like I'd be doing the Ice Bears a disservice if I walked away from this article without posting one of their big nights from last season, and that was when they hosted Mighty Ducks Night on December 28, 2019. The Ice Bears went full Wild Wing jersey, as you can see to the right, in that game, and the end result was a pretty fun jersey for an SPHL team to wear. I'm not saying the Wild Wing jerseys look minor-league in any way, but they seems to look more appropriate in a lower-level minor-league game. The fact that the Ice Bears altered Wild Wing to have their logo's bear head only makes these jerseys better, in my opinion, and that's what makes some of these minor-league promotions so much fun!

Enjoy Preds Night, Ice Bears fans. Just don't get catfished!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!