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Now to round off the first ten with our first Canadian team, which is also technically the first X-Men representative for this project. That's a lot of firsts. (And it won't be our only X-Men rep either!)
10. Montreal North Stars (Alpha Flight)
Name: Montreal’s NHSL expansion franchise was awarded on a night when both Polaris - the North Star itself - and an aurora borealis were visible above the city. The owners saw this as a sign of good fortune, and named their team the North Stars.
Logo: An M for Montreal in front of a four pointed star and a circle. The logo’s design resembles a compass pointing north.
Colours: Black, white and light blue.
Jerseys: A pair of traditional hockey sweaters, primarily black and white with blue accents and blue numbers. The home black jersey features a white shoulder yoke, and vice versa on the road white sweater.
Third Jersey: Amidst a wave of unusual alternate jersey designs came this one from the North Stars, with a pattern inspired by the same star that gave them their name. Blue is gone from the colour scheme and the logo has been adjusted, removing the circle and swapping the M for an N.
Compared to the US-based superheroes my options are much more limited with Canada, both in terms of numbers and how many of them could potentially work as team identities. So far I’ve narrowed it down to a few that don’t use the obvious red white and maple leaf imagery - otherwise I’d just end up with a bunch of Team Canadas (there is one exception, but I’ll get to it when I get to it). With that said: Northstar is a character I had no idea existed until I started planning this project, but his black and white colour scheme makes him somewhat unique compared to several other heroes and as we all know, the North Stars is a good name for a hockey team.
Visually, Northstar didn’t give me much to work with aside from the star motif of his suit. His colours are black and white, which despite my previous statement is a bit boring. Also he doesn’t have a logo of his own, but then he’s mostly affiliated with Alpha Flight and/or the X-Men. However he did get his own miniseries in 1994; the covers featured an 8 pointed star in the comic’s logo, so I mainly based my design around that. I also included a light blue accent as issue 1 used it as a keyline on the cover logo, but it also pairs well with black and white and seemed like a good fit for the identity.
For the logo I took that eight pointed star and - after a few attempts to fit an M for Montreal inside of it - opted to keep it simple, using a four pointed star and then overlaying the M in front of it, using that to (kind of) form the other four points. The angular shape of the M was meant to be evocative of the pattern on Northstar’s suit, but I also think a simple M is a good fit for a traditional hockey market like Montreal - despite them being an expansion team in this alternate universe.At the last minute I changed the M on the front of the third jersey to an N (you can still see the M version on the pants and helmet) as I’m sure someone would want to see what that’d look like. Curious to see if there’s any preference one way or the other.
The home and road uniforms are fairly traditional, again befitting of Montreal. The white shoulder yoke was based on Northstar’s suit, but for the stripes I mostly took inspiration from the Montreal Maroons and the last Minnesota North Stars jersey from before they moved for this look, though I admit it may come off as looking a bit generic like those lacer hoodies which all use the same striping design. On the other hand the third jersey is a more direct adaptation of Northstar’s suit, with a little influence from the Dallas Stars. I’d like to think this one stands out as being kind of wacky in spite of only using black and white.
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PotD:24/08/2017
