Florida Panthers Unveil New Logo Design

The Florida Panthers unveiled their new logo design on Thursday evening during a fan fest event at the BB&T Center in Sunrise. 

The new logo marks the club’s first change since entering the National Hockey League in 1993. The new primary logo, includes a panther inside of a shield with Florida across the top for the road white jerseys, while the home sweaters will consist of a panther inside the shield with Panthers across the top. The primary colors for the home jerseys will be red, blue and flat gold. 

The logo is inspired by patch of the United States Army 101^st Airborne Division. Team owner, Vinnie Viola, served in the 101^st Airborne. Viola said, “I think the logo harkens to the vanguard of courage, the idea that you put a shield on the hockey uniform, it is something to protect, but you also protect it. We also wanted something that began a new tradition of winning and demonstrated courage and selfless dedication to a team pursuit of victory.”

The new alternate logo will feature the state flag of Florida, with a sprawling panther above it, which will appear on the shoulder of the sweaters. With the exception of some minor tweaks to the original logo, the Cats have had the same leaping panther and red and blue jerseys for all 23 years of the existence of their organization. 

To celebrate the unveiling with their fans, Panthers players Vincent Trochek, Aaron Ekblad, Shawn Thornton and Steven Kampfer, along with former Panthers Bill Lindsay, Radek Dvorak, Olli Jokinen and Ed Jovanovski were on hand. 

Trochek said, “I am real excited, I do not see why anybody would complain about it. It is a great logo. It is a fresh start for us. We have been on the up for the last two years.”

 

He added, “The organization has never won a Stanley Cup with the old logo, so it is a time to start new, to start fresh, have a new logo, have a new look. We are pretty young. We have a lot of new guys. It is the perfect time to change the logo if you are going to do it. It is nice. It is serious. Kind of says we mean business. Hopefully we can do big things with it.”    

The Panthers third logo, which features an evolution of the original leaping panther, will also be used as the helmet logo. Viola’s son, John, who worked closely with Reebok on the new jerseys said, “We wanted very much to say that this was a new and mature and stable franchise.”

The younger Viola added, “Frankly, we felt that as much as we loved the leaping cat, an expansion team has got to show you his claws and show you its teeth and be sort of up front with their strength. And a team like us, 22 years in that is only getting better, we can be the guy in the back who you know who is tough and you know you do not want to mess with him and his performance. But we wanted to have that leaping panther there. It is our mark, it is our history and it means something to our franchise. So we wanted a new cat in the same sort of mold and I think we got that.”  

After unveiling the new jersey, they showed it on the jumbotron along with the words; fight, pride, respect, dedication, courage, honor, effort and community scrolling across. Panthers President and Chief Executive Officer, Matt Caldwell and assistant general manager, Eric Joyce are also Army veterans. 

Videos shown on the jumbotron, included highlights from this past season, as they won the Atlantic Division, along with a message from two soldiers from 101^st Airborne Division currently serving our great nation in Iraq. 

Team owner, Vinnie Viola also noted that the Panthers would be playing an exhibition game on October 8, against the New Jersey Devils at the U.S. Military Academy’s Tate Rink in West Point, New York. The home rink of the Army Black Knights hockey team. John Viola said that all proceeds from the game will benefit the Wounded Warriors Project.  

The young Viola added, “It is important for this organization because I think it is safe to say, for our family, the United States military has given us not only a big part of our value system but also the opportunity for us to even be here.”     

He also added, “The idea that you belong to something greater than yourself is often lost in a world where it is really easy to just be by yourself. And we wanted to make sure that those values that are so important to who we are as people, as a family, were part of this franchise. And the best way to do that is visually because people follow your brand and they follow what you look like. It is essential to who we are as a family, as shepherds of all of our organizations, and it will be essential to who we are as the Florida Panthers.”