Reader Submission - 1994-95 Denver Grizzlies Chris Luongo Jersey

Our latest reader submitted jersey comes from Conor McCue, and it's from the late, great International Hockey League and the short-lived Denver Grizzlies. While it's a really cool jersey, the story of where he found it really makes his submission unlike any other we've had so far.

Here is Conor's story about how he came to find the jersey and the story of the player who wore it;

I was recently over at my friend's house hanging out and watching the Kings-Coyotes game when we stumbled upon a goldmine of sports memorabilia.  His family’s friend had recently fallen into financial trouble and was storing all of his sports memorabilia at their house so that the government couldn’t seize it when they visited him later that week.   

We sifted through garbage bag after garbage bag of memorabilia and found many incredible things like Cal Ripken, Michael Jordan, Ozzie Smith, and Patrick Roy signed jerseys along with signed football helmets, baseballs, bats, and hockey pucks.  I was truly jealous of this man’s collection.  While we were drooling over the numerous pieces of sports history I noticed a hockey jersey that didn’t quite fit in with the rest of the group.  

The jersey was beat to hell and neither of us knew who’s it was.  We both knew it was from the Denver Grizzlies since we live in Colorado, but we had no idea who this Luongo player was.  After I came home and did some research, I found out that this guy who I thought was just some scrub from the IHL, was actually a pretty good hockey player with a respectable career, and is still relevant in the hockey world. 

I won’t give the history lesson behind the Denver Grizzlies because it has already been done on TSG, but all you have to know is that while they were in Denver they were very successful and jumpstarted hockey’s popularity in Colorado, which helped bring in the Avalanche and eventually led to their own demise.  Chris Luongo only played for the Denver Grizzlies in the 1994-1995 season, where they won their first Turner Cup.   

Both Luongo and Ziggy Palffy were the only notable NHLers on the team, but they weren’t missed much the following year when the Grizzlies won their second Turner Cup without them.  Luongo spilt the year between the New York Islanders and the Grizzlies, and ended up playing a total of 41 games for Denver with 15 points and 26 penalty minutes.  After his only season with the Grizzlies, Luongo went on to play close to a full season for the Islanders in 1995-1996 and then spent the remainder of his career playing for the US at the World Championships and jumping around Germany's Deutsche Eishockey Liga.  

After his playing career was over, Luongo became an assistant coach at Wayne State for two years and then moved to become an assistant coach at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.  After two seasons as the Chargers’ assistant coach, Luongo was named the head coach of UAH, a job he still holds today.   

Thanks to Conor for taking the time to photograph the jersey and share the unusual story of his jersey find. We really appreciate the efforts involved when our readers share their jerseys.

The Grizzlies had a really a unique jersey for the time period with the bear claw and slash marks around the waist and we really loved the way they carried the theme over to the numbers on the back, something that must have driven the customizers of their fan's jerseys in Denver, and later Salt Lake City, crazy.

If you have a jersey in your collection that you'd like to share with us and your fellow readers, please submit your pictures and a story to go with it, no matter how brief or detailed, to spyboy1@gmail.com and we look forward to seeing your favorites.

Black Friday - 1927-28 Chicago Black Hawks Jersey

In honor of the official kickoff to the Christmas shopping season and the madness known as "Black Friday", today we take a look at the first black jersey worn in the National Hockey League.

The Chicago Black Hawks entered the NHL in time for the 1926-27 season wearing a white jersey adorned with multiple black stripes in the art deco style of the times.

The majority of the team's players came from the Portland Rosebuds of the defunct Western Hockey League. The club was named after their owner Frederic McLaughlin's army unit, of which he had been a commander, the 333rd Machine Gun Battalion of the 86th Infantry, nicknamed the "Black Hawk Division". It was McLaughlin's wife Irene who designed the team's Indian head logo.

Despite leading the league in goals scored with 115, they also allowed the most goals with 116 and finished under .500 with a 19-22-3 record. They would qualify for the playoffs, but fell to the Boston Bruins 6-1 and tied them 4-4 in Game 2 to lose the total goals series 10-5.

For their second season, the club would debut brand new sweaters, which were a complete color reversal of their inaugural sweaters, now black with a multitude of white stripes. This sweater was the first black sweater in NHL history.

While the sweaters colors were reversed from year one, the crest was not and remained white on black. In all honesty, it too probably could have had it's colors reversed as well for greater contrast and legibility.

Today's featured jersey, a 1927-28 Chicago Black Hawks Teddy Graham jersey, shows the higher placement of the crest for the 1927-28 season, which overlapped the lower two chest stripes.

For 1928-29 and subsequent seasons, the crest was lowered below the striping and the collar would change from black to white as shown below in this photo or Art Somers from the 1929-30 season.

The Black Hawks would wear these sweaters for seven seasons and win their first Stanley Cup wearing them in 1934.

They would begin the next 1934-35 season wearing them, but midway through the schedule they would debut a new, short-lived set of black sweaters with a wide white chest stripe with red trim which would only be worn for the remainder of that season only.

As most teams only had a single style of sweater through the 1930's worn for all games regardless of home or road, no other team would introduce another black jersey until the 1948-49 season when light and dark "home" and "road" jerseys had by then become the accepted practice, which allowed the Boston Bruins to introduce their first black sweater, knowing Chicago would now be able to wear their white sweaters to differentiate themselves from the Bruins.

Hockey Thanksgiving

With today being the American Thanksgiving, we decided to forego the usual format and list The Top Ten Things We Are Thankful For - Third String Goalie style.

#10 - College and juniors jerseys - Simple, no frills jerseys with classic styling. You've got your team colors and your logo. What more do you need?

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#9 - Kathryn Tappen. She actually makes sitting through Columbus Blue Jackets "highlights" on the NHL Network something to look forward to.

She absolutely knows her sports without question while nearly balancing out us having to look at Jamie McLennan.

#8 - Minor league jerseys. Freed of the constraints of tradition and the fear of failure that limits NHL clubs who can't afford to guess wrong due to the huge amounts of retail sales their jerseys generate, at times minor league jerseys are allowed to experiment and stretch the limits of creativity, which can pay off with some terrific sweaters and even better number fonts.

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#7 - Awesome alternate jerseys. As wrong as the bad ones are, the best ones are just so right. This is a prime example of the best of the best NHL alternates, a classy, unique new logo and great use of colors. Perfection on ice.

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#6 - Throwback jerseys. Nothing gets us going like a throwback. It's one of the main reasons our collection centers around the 1991-92 season, that was the year that the Original 6 teams wore the first throwback jerseys in NHL history.

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The recent addition of the Winter Classic, and the re-emergence of the Heritage Classic, has assured us of at least a couple of beauties every season, be they straight throwbacks or faux-backs, such as the Boston Bruins Winter Classic jerseys, which borrowed elements from various Bruins jerseys of the past.

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#5 - Awful alternate jerseys. The jerseys we love to hate, courtesy of The Class of '96. What would this blog be without The Burger King and the Wild Wing?

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#4 - National team jerseys. Herb Brooks said it best, "You're looking for players whose name on the front of the sweater is more important than the one on the back." Nothing like suiting up for your home country in a short tournament where every game counts.

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#3 - Patches. Nothing sets a jersey apart like a tournament, anniversary, memorial, event, Stanley Cup Finals or even sponsorship patch. That kind of attention to detail always scores points with us.

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#2 - YouTube. Where to begin with this one? Incredible goals, comic moments, of course all the brawls plus the obscure, hilarious and unexpected. You just never know what YouTube has in store from one day to the next. The only thing that we dislike about it is when we embed a video from YouTube and it's taken down for whatever reason later on.

#1 - The Buffalo Sabres. Time and again, most of our favorite stories always seem to involve the Buffalo Sabres. Their first draft pick in history was awarded to them by a spin of a wheel, they once drafted an imaginary Japanese player, the city was paralyzed by a snowstorm for a week, causing 300 people to seek refuge in their arena and limiting the club to just 15 players for a road game in Montreal where the plucky warriors tied the defending Stanley Cup champions 3-3. They hosted the first Winter Classic, signed the first Russian to defect to the NHL and once played a playoff game in a thick fog in an arena haunted by bats. They haven't won the Stanley Cup, but they've won our hearts with their quirky and unique tales. God bless Punch Imlach.

Then there is the club's jersey history, which stretches from the sublime to the ridiculous having featured logos which depict a buffalo, a goat and a banana slug...

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...with a few unexpected twists along the way.

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We'd love to hear your favorites in the comments section below after you are done taking your post-turkey dinner nap today, and with tomorrow being "Black Friday", please consider visiting our advertisers in the column to the right when shopping for yourself or the hockey fan on your gift list.

Have a happy Thanksgiving a drive safely!