The Penalty Box

The NHL gave a preview on what the new jerseys will look like for the all-star game and the upcoming season.  I was mostly worried about the cut and form of the jersey, followed by the design.  The cut isn’t the stupid form-fitting idea of the Olympics, and it actually hangs quite well off the body.  However, the stupid crap down the sides needs to go away, and I’ll have to reserve judgment until I see the team jerseys instead of something that was designed by friggin’ Willy Wonka on LSD.  The All-Star jerseys were almost always ugly, so I really don’t care about them.

The stupid part? An authentic all-star jersey costs over $400 USD.  Way to reach out to your fans there, NHL.  Compared to current authentic jerseys at around $200 USD.  Hopefully the team jerseys won’t go up that high.  Rumours are that the replicas (which are currently around $110 CDN and the ones I can afford) are going to have heat pressed numbers, leaving the stitching to only authentics.  I’ve seen rumours to the contrary as well, so hopefully the contrary holds true.  Heat pressed numbers look terrible.
The depressing part is although the jerseys don’t seem to be as bad as everyone feared, the expectations were still that low.   It’s pretty bad when you have to rely on “well it’s not as bad as you think” instead of “look at how cool this is.”  The entire marketing department and most of the management needs to be sacked.  Weasels, all of them.