A familiar name unlocks the NY Islanders’ mysterious Hometown Remix message

Leave it to the New York Islanders social media team to turn a jersey teaser into homework. Fortunately, this assignment comes with a familiar name - Ziggy Palffy.

The Hometown Remix image features a string of letters that initially looks like someone dropped a keyboard down the stairs.

AOZP BFPT EMJ RXDP GWMJGSY NL

But there’s an actual message hiding in there, and the key to unlocking it is PALFFY. Run those letters through the right decoding process, and the mystery becomes:

“LOOK WHAT THE TIDE BROUGHT IN.”

Credit to fan @sportsenjoyer22, who shared a helpful walkthrough on X explaining how to solve it using a Vigenère cipher. Despite the intimidating name, the basic idea is straightforward. The repeating keyword tells you how to decode each letter. Write PALFFY repeatedly beneath the coded message, ignoring the spaces. Then use an alphabet chart to match each key letter with its corresponding coded letter.

Got it? Good.

For the opening word, AOZP, the key letters are PALF. Find the P row, move across to A, and look up to the column heading. That gives you L. Repeat the process for the next three letters, and you get O, O and K. Suddenly, the new alphabet starts making sense. Keep going, and the full sentence emerges.

What comes next? Figuring out what the Islanders are telling us about the jersey itself.

Palffy was the team’s best player during the Fisherman Era. Making his surname the key, then pairing it with a reference to the tide, certainly points toward a nautical, Fisherman-inspired theme.

That doesn’t reveal the exact crest, colors or striping. But those two clues together feel awfully deliberate. The code is solved. And if the Islanders wanted fans thinking about the Fisherman before the full reveal, they’ve certainly given them plenty of reason to do exactly that.

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