Overview
- The contest was cut to two navy-blue finalists — a lighthouse motif and a sweater with “ISLANDERS” across the chest — after an eight-team bracket of fan-picked designs.
- The final public voting opened Tuesday at noon on newyorkislanders.com/fanvote and will close Thursday at 5 p.m., with the winner subject to NHL approval and manufacturing lead time.
- Forward Mathew Barzal revealed the two finalists in a team video and publicly said he prefers the wordmark “ISLANDERS” design.
- The Islanders received roughly 80,490 submissions after launching the contest July 8, and a committee of players and hockey-operations staff expanded the planned five finalists to eight because of the volume.
- Many fans have voiced disappointment on social media that the finalists are conservative compared with the large pool of entries, renewing questions about whether crowd-sourced branding yields better long-term designs and what the team’s next steps should be.