Manitoba Moose Return to AHL, Unveil Logos and Uniforms

The Moose have returned to the American Hockey League.

True North Sports & Entertainment, owners of the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets, announced today that their top-level AHL affiliate would be known as the Manitoba Moose starting with the upcoming 2015-16 season.

The Manitoba Moose previously played in Winnipeg during their seasons without the NHL. The IHL’s Minnesota Moose relocated to Winnipeg for 1996-97, the season after the Jets moved to Phoenix. The Moose remained in Winnipeg, surviving a merger with the AHL, until the new Jets joined the NHL in 2011.

This brings back one of the all-time great minor league hockey brands, originally designed by SportsLogos.Net forum member “Sterling84” during a contest held back in 2003 (so forgive us if we’re a little biased about it).

What’s different from 2011? The colours have changed — gone are the brown, green, and black. In their place are the colours of the Winnipeg Jets — double blue, double grey. There is also a missing maple leaf from the “MANITOBA” wordmark and the body of the moose is now seen out of the shadows.

As with the logo the jerseys pay homage to the parent Jets, in that they’re Jets jerseys with the Moose logo slapped on.

Quite sadly, the custom moose-antler number font is not coming back.

The return of the Moose isn’t much of a surprise, four years ago we had sources from within the organization telling us the company was all set to name their NHL team the Moose rather than the Jets.