Blues, Blackhawks Winter Classic Uniforms Officially Unveiled

Confirming a leak we discussed last week, the St Louis Blues and Chicago Blackhawks both unveiled their retro-themed uniforms for the 2017 NHL Winter Classic.

As we saw then, the Blues will be wearing a uniform which closely resembles their expansion season threads from 1967-68. The Chicago Blackhawks will be taking it back a decade earlier and will wear uniforms strikingly similar to what they wore in Washington’s Winter Classic just two years ago (c’mon ‘Hawks, you could’ve gotten a little more creative here).

In honour of their 50th season the St Louis Blues take it back to the beginning, their uniform is a lighter shade of blue than what they currently wear (and even lighter than what they wore at the time) and incorporates heritage white or cream in place of what was originally white. At the collar the team plays it historically accurate by resisting the urge to add laces instead going with the “ribbed crewneck” style used in 1967… they will have the NHL Shield at the collar however which, of course, was not worn with this set originally. Player name and numbers are yellow, the numbers add blue and white trim — a yellow name wasn’t added until 1977/78 as the Blues, like every other team of that era, played without names on the backs of their jerseys in the 1960s. On the right shoulder is a 2017 Winter Classic logo patch.

Pants are blue, socks match and use identical striping to that featured at the waist of the jersey, the player gloves even incorporate the heritage white seen throughout.

A side-by-side to give you an idea of how historically accurate Blues got with their uniform:

You may notice there’s also a difference in that bottom waist stripe, this is a design element that varied from player-to-player on that ’68 team. Some had the large stripe, others had the thin stripe… hey it was 1968, there wasn’t quite so much attention to detail with these things back then.

As we mentioned earlier the Chicago Blackhawks are wearing uniforms very similar to what they wore at the 2015 Winter Classic against Washington. There are some differences however and we’re happy to point those out to you now.

Both jerseys are white and are modelled after uniforms worn by the team in the late 1950s, however this time around the Blackhawks are using the proper logo that originally went with this uniform style. This is the first time we’ve seen Chicago wear this logo as part of a throwback set.

Similar again to 2015 is the placement of the “tomahawk-C” patch, what’s changed is the colours of this patch — we’ve got a handy three uniform comparison collage for you here:

St Louis and Chicago will battle in the second outdoor game in the NHL in as many days, the game will be played at Busch Stadium on January 2nd just one day after the the Detroit Red Wings and Toronto Maple Leafs face-off outside in Toronto on New Year’s Day.