Hockey Team Branding- the Silvis Sentinels

[Rin 190]

So one of, if not my favorite parts of fake sim hockey is the opportunity to create an entire team's identity from scratch. From picking a city, to choosing colors, to coming up with the right nickname, something about it just scratches the perfect creative itch for me in a way that nothing else can. For every "Panthers" and "Wildcats" team name out there in the world, there's another city/mascot combination that's truly unique to them. Very few things, in my opinion, can capture the identity of a locale and its people quite like their local sports team. Don't ever doubt the power of a logo on a baseball cap.

 

With this post (and perhaps an ongoing series of posts to come), I figure I can at least write down some of my musings and/or creations when it comes to team branding. I've put an embarrassingly large amount of thought into certain team identities, so hopefully you enjoy taking a peak at the thought process behind them.

 

Starting things off is perhaps my new favorite identity, created for an NHL 2k11 sim league that I really need to get back into rebooting- the Silvis Sentinels.

 

Logo for the Silvis Sentinels

 

Silvis Illinois is not most peoples' radar, nor should it be. It's an incredibly niche location chosen by a 10 or 11 year old me, scrambling to find towns or cities without an NHL team to place my fictional CPU sim league team. A tiny brain with little knowledge to go off of ended up defaulting to the hometown of my mother, and current (at the time) home of my grandfather- the "City of Progress," Silvis IL. Nowadays, we use that motto more in jest; Silvis is an older, more run-down small town that serves more as a reminder of how things used to be, rather than how they are now. However, if you pay attention to a certain sport, you might recognize the city for a fairly prestigious yearly event.

 

A display commemorating the John Deere Classic at TPC Deere Run in Silvis, Illinois

 

If you follow golf at all, you'll be familiar with the John Deere Classic, held at TPC Deere Run in the Quad Cities-- more specifically, Silvis Illinois. It's a fairly large PGA tour event, backed by one of the longest running title sponsors in golf. This event is probably the second most recognizable thing hosted by Silvis, topped only by the sponsoring company itself. That's right, the John Deere headquarters are located here in Silvis, which is exactly why they want their name associated with its biggest event.

 

The "Sentinels" name comes with a far more interesting backstory. A monument exists on the now-named "Hero Street" of Silvis, honoring the lives of immigrants who once lived on the same few blocks. This street was once home to a number of Mexican immigrants that worked for the Rock Island Railroad, many of whom answered the call of duty when the United States entered international conflict. Fighting for their new homeland, a total of 84 immigrants would go on to serve in World War II, Korea, and the war in Vietnam. Eight of these men would die during their involvement in WWII, and it is for them that this monument was initially constructed and dedicated. These brave men were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, fighting for their new home away from home.

 

The Hero Street monument in Silvis

 

It's poetic that the "Deere" is an animal associated with protection and safety. Not only does it represent the namesake of the city's most recognizable export, it's the perfect symbol of its people; the people who were willing to go out and give all they had to keep their new way of life safe. The logo is made complete with a shield in the background, further reinforcing the presence of the deer.

 

On a less serious note, the logo was done by a Fiverr artist who, honestly, kind of killed it. Granted, we had some decent reference images to go off of, but I think it turned out lovely. Looks great on the crest of a jersey.

 

The purple comes from its history within our little NHL 2k11 sim league. Some time ago, my brother and I threw a number of fully custom teams together in NHL 2k11 and had them play against each other, CPU vs CPU. Taking up the helm of our own franchises, we would attempt to make savvy roster moves in order to win a championship. Silvis "belonged" to neither my brother or I, and instead was more of a background team that helped fill out our list of opponents. Hence the reach for a far more obscure locale.

 

Initially, the Silvis-based team was restricted to a logo and name that matched whatever the game allowed us to choose from. While names were free reign, logos were, of course, limited to a set of generic ones that had been provided. In need of a more extravagant color to round out the league's palette, the purple-donning Silvis Falcons were born of a mostly renamed Toronto Maple Leafs team circa 2010. This team, with each player renamed and a new set of uniforms on their backs, would go on to become one of the league's most potent offenses for years to come-- ironic, for a team that would later don the defensive "Sentinels" moniker. Though they rostered players who would regularly sit among the top echelon of point scoring, they could never quite bring everything together to make a deep playoff run.

 

That was, of course, until my grandfather passed away.

 

Like a predictable feel-good movie, the first playoffs without my grandfather saw the Silvis Falcons finally lift their first cup in a dominating 4-0 sweep. The purple-clad offensive juggernauts would be bringing the trophy home to a city which hosted everyone except for the one person that inspired its creation to begin with. The Falcons would add a second cup to their legacy just two seasons later, making them one of just three teams to claim more than one championship. The other two, of course, being mine and my brother's.

 

As I've started to resurrect the sim league and get into texture modding for NHL 2k11, I've made the decision to rebrand and relocate teams to give them stronger identities. I knew from the start that Silvis wouldn't be going anywhere. They never will. Armed now with a new identity that helps tie them to their city, and a few nods to their days as a naïve creation of a little kid on a hockey video game, I wonder just how much they can continue adding to the legacy of their team. Of their city.

 

Even though they're not the team I headed, they're the identity and history that I've come to love the most.

 

The new Silvis Sentinels uniform set

Now that I'm armed with the power of literal texture modding, I can give any team any uniform I want. For Silvis, I ended up repurposing an early Golden Knights jersey concept-- back when the team was rumored to be the Las Vegas Knights. The steel grey primary really sells the defensive "Sentinels" moniker, and it allowed me to include the purple as a contrasting highlight that would harken back to the early 2k11 days of team design. In that way, I was able to infuse a lot of my own personal history into this team's branding, which is a tremendously sweet thought.

 

Hopefully this was an enjoyable read-- I didn't realize just how much I had to say until I started writing it all out. In fairness, though, I picked this team to talk about first because of how much I was able to dive into the history and legacy of Silvis; I learned so much about where my family was from while collecting inspiration for a fucking sim league hockey team of all things. I think that's part of what makes this process so much fun for me. This team, more than all the others I've worked on, is the perfect example of how I think a location's identity can by conveyed through the iconography of their local sports team. When you don a hat or a jersey of your local squad, you're doing more than just supporting them. You're showing off a little piece of where you're from. You're putting a part of your city's culture on display for the world to see. And if that's the case, then I believe the thought and meaning behind those symbols should be as strong as they possibly can be.

 

I'd like to follow up with the thoughts or history behind some of my other teams, but I'm a little ashamed to say that they're not as lore rich as the Sentinels. This one, for me personally, sets a high bar of personal satisfaction that I doubt I'll ever reach again. I'm learning how to create my own logos as I continue to tweak the branding of my personal team (formerly the poorly thought out Las Vegas Yetis, now the Galveston Terrapins), and if I'm able to put together a logo and uniform set entirely of my own volition as opposed to relying on others, I might be able to clear that bar. Only time will tell, I suppose.

 

At any rate, thank you for taking the time to read this far. If you're particularly attached to a team's branding, real or fake, PLEASE share it so I can geek out over it with you!

 

1,524 words, even if they're a bit rambly. I'm yapping over text.

[Rin 190]

Claiming for week 3 of 3!