Eric Bodamer’s journey from Sabres fan to designing his hometown team’s jerseys

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Eric Bodamer screamed so loud at his television at 4 a.m. in Portland, Ore., that, all these years later, he jokes he wouldn’t have cared if he got evicted.

Maybe his building manager would have understood.

The roar Bodamer let out was in response to Dominik Hasek rolling in his crease to deny Eric Lindros in the semifinal of the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

Bodamer, a 1988 graduate of Williamsville South High School, designed the Nike-branded uniforms worn by Hasek and the Czech Republic during their dramatic, unexpected run to the gold medal that winter. He stayed up late into the night for each game. Several years earlier, Bodamer was a fan in Memorial Auditorium letting out those same raucous cheers in response to Hasek’s heroics in net for the Buffalo Sabres.

A design career that traversed the country, including time at The Advantage Company in Williamsville and New Era when the apparel giant was based in an old farmhouse in Derby, led Bodamer to an opportunity to unite his passions for hockey, design and his hometown team.

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“I think seeing Hasek in the Czech jersey I designed, and then winning it all, that’s still the best,” Bodamer, now 52 said with pride. “That’s the best. Don’t get me wrong. I loved seeing the Golden Knights come out, seeing the Sabres coming out in the 50th and all that. But that moment in time for me, at my age, where I was in my career, my favorite player of all time from my hometown representing his country, winning goal, underdog fashion, just amazing.”

In the 25 years since, Bodamer has been responsible for many of the jerseys worn by NHL teams. At Nike, he helped create alternate uniforms for the Anaheim Ducks and San Jose Sharks, in addition to those for the Olympics in 1998.  While designing for Reebok, he had a hand in the infamous Sabres slug logo and the various looks used during the World Cup of Hockey.

And as senior designer at Adidas, his current title, he sketched the textured crest that became the centerpiece of the white-and-gold uniform for the franchise’s 50th anniversary season in 2019-20. Both reverse retro looks are the product of his vision. He helped design the Sabres’ royal and gold uniforms after ownership decided to return to the franchise’s roots. The black-and-red Goathead alternates for this season are also Bodamer’s creation. Elsewhere in the NHL, he was part of the design teams that brought the Vegas Golden Knights and Seattle Kraken to life.

Eric Bodamer with the Sabres’ 50th anniversary uniform that he designed. 

Submitted photo

Bodamer calls his time with Reebok, then Adidas, “serendipitous” because his arrival at both coincided with the Sabres deciding to create or redesign one of their uniforms. Bodamer’s excitement bubbled to the surface as he described the process of marrying the organization’s plan with his vision for what Sabres fans want to see on the ice.

“I always use the word surreal, because it is,” said Bodamer, who was inducted into Williamsville South’s Wall of Fame in November. “It starts out as an idea in your head or a thought. And then 9, 12 months later, it’s on the ice and you’re watching these guys skate up. That’s your hometown team. That’s the team you grew up and loved. To have all those memories cheering for them growing up, it’s crazy.

“It’s kind of a unique thing that doesn’t happen in many industries, especially this one. I was very lucky and fortunate for this amount of time in this span to work on my hometown team and bring them the love and passion that I have, and I know all the other fans have into what I was doing. Making it something the fans want but also beautiful, purposeful, and bringing some love to it for the people of Buffalo.”

While other students were spending their time between classes in study halls or the library, Bodamer frequented the art room at Williamsville South.

He always loved to draw and wanted to be a cartoonist or illustrator. Sports design wasn’t on his mind yet. However, even at an early age, Bodamer was sketching the Bills’ logo and trying his hand at the Super Bowl designs the NFL used each year. His art teacher, Vincent DeWind, helped Bodamer create a portfolio to send to various schools.

“That was my haven, up in the art room,” said Bodamer.

Sports fandom is part of the culture in Western New York. Bodamer still has a photo from his childhood of him wearing a Bills jacket while sitting on Santa Claus’ lap at the Eastern Hills Mall. He collected hockey cards, including those with the rounded corners from the French Connection era. His love for the Sabres reached a fever pitch when he realized their goalie, Tom Barrasso, wasn’t much older than him.

At Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, Bodamer began to pursue his passion for design. This was before the release of Adobe Creative Suite, so everything was done by hand instead of on a computer.

In his own time, Bodamer began to dabble in sports logos. He used color pencils to create a poster that featured the logos for Super Bowl XXII, as well as those of the Bengals and 49ers. The more Bodamer drew, the more he realized that sports design was the path he wanted to pursue.

“I go back to that moment where it kind of clicked for me like, ‘This is what I like and this is what I want to do,” he recalled.

A new age of sports branding began as Bodamer was starting his senior project. Suddenly, numerous new logos were released across professional sports. Teams became more daring with their various uniforms and branding. Interest among casual fans began to spike. Fashion in sports became a topic of discussion on online message boards.

Major League Baseball’s expansion teams, the Colorado Rockies and Florida Marlins, released their looks. The Baltimore Orioles made a significant change away from the cartoon bird. Bodamer tailored his senior project to sports design, including logos and apparel. And upon returning to Buffalo after graduation, he applied to every advertising and marketing agency in town. He thought his degree from a prestigious school such as Pratt would get him in the door somewhere.

“Crickets,” he said with a chuckle. “I thought, oh, I went to Pratt, ‘I’m gonna come back to Buffalo and be like, Hey, I’m gonna write my own ticket.’ Nope, no one even talked to me.”

His luck changed when he landed at The Advantage Company on Main Street.

Eric Bodamer has made a career of his passion for design and hockey.

Jenna St. Martin

Above the Zamboni entrance at Memorial Auditorium, behind the goaltender who struck fear in opponents during his nine seasons with the Buffalo Sabres, Bodamer and his buddy from The Advantage Company, Joe Kontrabecki, taped a sign that read: “Hasek MVP. Enough said.”

Bodamer and Kontrabecki then settled into their seats high up in the Golds at The Aud and watched the latest dominant performance by Hasek, who was wearing the royal and gold colors that were synonymous with the Sabres from their inception in 1970 until the arrival of the Goathead in 1996, both of which Bodamer would later bring back to life.

Among the numerous memories Bodamer made watching the Sabres in The Aud and the building now known as KeyBank Center, his frequent trips to the arena that season in 1993-94 stand above the rest. He marveled over the way Hasek made the seemingly impossible look routine each night, including the game for which they created the sign. Bodamer’s career in sports design had yet to begin and little did he know the role Hasek would have in it.

“That was the best moment,” Bodamer, said.

“I’m living vicariously through him in a way,” said Kontrabecki, who lives in Orchard Park and owns an apparel business, Retro Buffalo. “We’ve shared in the ups and downs of the blue and the gold this whole time. But to see him parlay what he really loves the most, and that’s design, and the Sabres and hockey in a much broader spectrum. I mean, God bless him, he’s doing exactly what he set out to do and it took him a while to get there, but he’s doing it. He’s breathing rarefied air. I mean, he and I are both designers. And you know, we came up together, and it’s so cool. It’s so cool.”

At the time, Bodamer and Kontrabecki were cutting their teeth in advertising and marketing at The Advantage Company. Bodamer designed the weekly Gusto ad, in-store displays and direct mail pieces. In 1994, Bodamer joined New Era for his first post-graduate opportunity in sports design.

Minor league baseball was his main assignment. Because New Era was making the hats for these teams, designers such as Bodamer were also able to revamp the logos. His first was the River City Rumblers of Huntington, W.Va., and he still has his sketches of the rhino with a bat slung over its shoulder. After eight months, Bodamer decided to move to California to seek other opportunities.

Not long after arriving, he saw an advertisement for an opening at Nike. At 25 years old, he was hired and moved to Portland, Ore. At Nike, he worked on the rebrand of the Denver Broncos and the creation of the Houston Texans’ logo. The company also had contracts with four NHL teams and the International Ice Hockey Federation for the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano.

A routine stroll through at Nike’s offices led to a new assignment from his creative director, Todd Van Horne, who told Bodamer that he was the new lead designer for all hockey projects at Nike, including the Olympics. Bodamer designed most of the 14 uniforms worn by the participating countries in the tournament.

“Eric’s a great guy,” said Jeff Eagles, who was Bodamer’s design director at Reebok. “One of those easy-going guys in the business. So laid back. But just obviously, huge, huge, deep passion for hockey. He’s really tried to follow that and build his career around that. I know he’s taken different jaunts away from it, but he’s always found a way to get back to hockey uniforms.”

A call from Reebok in 2003 led Bodamer back to hockey.

The company had the NHL contract and its art director wanted to know if Bodamer was interested in freelancing on a few projects, one of which was the slug logo the Sabres introduced for the 2006-07 season.

At the time, Bodamer was working in the apparel industry in New York City but wasn’t going to pass on the opportunity. He made the trip, then approached Reebok with two ideas. One option was the slug logo and the other was the Sabres’ original crest with royal and gold. He’s always monitored the discourse on sports design message boards, no matter the project, because he understands that fans have strong opinions about what their favorite team wears. 

“I was going to Reebok with the hope that they would go to the Sabres and be like, ‘This is what your fans want,’ ” said Bodamer. “’They just want the old logo.’ I even have my old sketches of a cleaned-up version of the old logo. They’re different than what we have now. But I was on that path ages ago.

“It was great, because it got me back into it a little bit and kind of lit the fire again, like, ‘OK, I want to do this again.’ ”

Bodamer eventually decided it was time to return to sports design. He contacted Nike, Adidas and Under Armour but said he didn’t hear back. In a twist of fate, Reebok was looking for an NHL designer and a recruiter called Bodamer not knowing his background in the sport.

Sabres prospect and University of Minnesota defenseman Ryan Johnson will have to decide if he wants to join the organization that drafted him or seek an opportunity elsewhere.

In February 2015, he moved to Boston to join the team there and relocated to Portland when the account was moved to Adidas’ office in Portland. In the past eight years, he’s played a prominent role in the league’s breakthrough in apparel.

“It’s his attention to detail and the research he does is unparalleled,” said Brian Gundell, a designer who worked with Bodamer on the Kraken project. “He really is knowledgeable about hockey in general and he puts that knowledge to really, really good use. But I also think he doesn’t get stuck on doing things, traditionally, quote, unquote, I think he has a really good ability to balance doing things that are new and fresh and innovative. But also to be able to do those really cool, traditional designs that play well with fans across the board.” 

Among all the projects he’s handled, those involving the Sabres are closest to his heart, from the ode to Buffalo on the collar of the current royal and gold uniforms to the long-awaited return of the Goathead. He was in the building for No Goal in the 1999 Stanley Cup final and developed a friendship with Seymour Knox IV, whose insight into the history of the franchise inspired Bodamer during the creation of the 50th anniversary jersey.

And, in some ways, his career came full circle in January 2013 when he attended the ceremony in which Hasek’s No. 39 jersey was retired by the Sabres. Bodamer went with Kontrabecki and wore the Czech Republic uniform he designed, the one that will always be linked to Hasek’s Olympic heroics. His passion for his hometown team was a driving force behind what the Sabres are wearing today.

“Adding the little thing from the city flag into the back neck, that’s as much for the players as it is my fans,” Bodamer said. “I want the guys to go into the locker room and when they see that hanging, they remember who they’re playing for.

“You’re playing for the city of Buffalo. You give them everything you’ve got, they’ll all give it all back to you tenfold.”

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