Adidas today unveiled home jersey designs for all thirty-one National Hockey League clubs at an event in Las Vegas, Nevada. Each NHL team will be taking the ice wearing the new Adidas uniforms beginning with the upcoming 2017-18 season. Adidas takes over for Reebok as the official jersey supplier of the NHL.
Before we get into the changes to each team let’s look at the what’s happening to every club across the board. The new jersey is being referred to as “ADIZERO”, the jerseys are 19% lighter than the jerseys worn this past season, the weight of the crest dropping over 40% on its own.
The change you’ll notice right away is the new collar. The NHL shield remains but is no longer placed on a lower layer with flaps nearby, it’s now front and center on a pentagon, it’s also of the new “Chrome Flex” style. Take a look, with last year’s style on the left:
This collar comes in a few different styles depending on whether there are laces or not used:
“͞Specifically created for elite performance, we’ve designed the ADIZERO Authentic NHL jerseys to deliver advanced innovation and technical design for the world’s best hockey players,” said Dan Near, Head of Adidas Hockey in the official press release. ͞”We build products for the creator athlete. Our mission is to help athletes perform better and we look forward to making our on-ice debut this season with the new Lighter, Cooler, and Stronger adidas Hockey ADIZERO Authentic NHL jerseys.͟”
Naturally all eyes are on the expansion Vegas Golden Knights, so let’s just dive right in and start there. Here’s the home look for the Golden Knights inaugural season in the Sin City this fall:
Grey as the base colour with black, gold, and red stripes on either arm and the primary shield logo on the chest. At the waist we see a thin gold stripe with a much larger black stripe below. The shoulder features their alternate logo, the famous star from the Welcome to Las Vegas sign with two crossed swords incorporated into it.
Inside the collar, or the hanger tag, it’s red with the “VEGAS” wordmark in white:
So far this appears like any, old jersey design (there’s no flashing LED lights or anything!)… well, let’s go ahead and take ourselves a closer look, hmm?
On the shield of the crest we see something interesting, not part of the actual primary logo for the club they’re making use of raised embroidery to create an entirely new design. This idea carries over to the gold striping on the sleeves and waist (Also notice the perforated number style present on the sleeve, we’ll get into that a bit more later):
It reminds me of when the Columbus Blue Jackets (also an expansion team) added a subtle horizontal striping pattern to their home and road sweaters… hey, if you’re going to try anything new you’re gonna do it with an expansion club. Might as well!
The biggest change (to an existing team) is the Minnesota Wild who has an entirely new design for their home jersey next season:
The Wild ditched the idea of using red at home choosing to retain the green from their alternate uniform of the last several seasons (both previous jerseys seen above on the left), they wisely decided to go back using just the primary logo on the chest but now accompanied by a cream horizontal stripe behind it. This stripe is duplicated on the sleeves with red added to it. Laces are now of the modern style, collar is green and cream, the pentagon in red. A single, thin cream stripe right at the waist.
The shoulder has a new-ish logo added to it, the “M” used on the front of their alternate jersey last season has gone solo, appearing without the rest of mates.
A big surprise upgrade for me was the Carolina Hurricanes who decided, “yeah, black is a part of our colour scheme” and in a very subtle fashion brought back an old favourite to their striping — comparing last year’s jersey to next year’s:
The storm flags are back! A great way for the ‘Canes to celebrate their 20th anniversary season.
Here’s a closer look at the flags, faded but still better than not being there at all:
One team we heard a lot about leading up to this unveiling is the New Jersey Devils, rumours ran wild about the Devils making a change with some expecting and hoping for the return of green, well good news! There’s green! Ta Da!
Eh, that’s no good. Yeah, here’s a classic case of “well, we might as well *do something*”. Guys, you really didn’t need to. The waist stripes are gone, now a very thin black stripe right at the base, striping is reversed on the sleeves, collar loses white.
Did you completely forget I said green was returning? Well, here it is:
Inside the collar, the hanger tag. The years ’95, ’00, ’03 are included to celebrate the team’s three Stanley Cup victories, very much worth noting that the team didn’t wear green at all during those three seasons. Doesn’t matter, won’t be see on the ice anyways.
Let’s go to New Jersey’s former home and take a look at the Colorado Avalanche who very muchly upgraded their uniform today:
That Reebok Edge piping is gone. Lack of waist stripe? No more, waist striping returns (and how!) The Avalanche have brought back their mountain peak waist stripe and grey trim to separate all the burgundy and blue. It’s a much cleaner look all around, and it brings back memories of the two-time Stanley Cup winners back ’round the Turn of the Century, the “C” shoulder logo from last season returns, Bigfoot still remains at large.
One addition struck me as odd was that the numbers were now trimmed in burgundy:
Seems like it should be black, doesn’t it? Maybe I’m just not used to it and looking at it with my vintage-tinted glasses.
Another team to make some significant changes is the Nashville Predators who did the right thing here and dropped the piping:
At least I think it was the right thing. This idea sounds wonderful to me in theory, but I feel like it’s missing something without it. I’ll wait until I see the full set with pants and socks before passing judgement but on first glance I’m a little disappointed in this design.
Calgary’s a team everyone had high hopes for when we mentioned they’d be making a change. Well, lower them hopes:
Yes, it’s an improvement, that piping had to go and now it’s gone. I just really wanted a white “C” back on the chest again, and for them to get rid of those flags on the shoulder already… you’re not Alberta’s team, you’re not Canada’s team, let’s just accept that and move on.
The Flames also changed their name and number style, a comparison here:
Italics, which had been in use by the team on their name and numbers since the 1994-95 season, are gone.
Did you hear that the Buffalo Sabres were bringing back royal blue, did you hear that 100% confirmed by some guys on Twitter? Well, they were wrong because yup, navy blue is back.
While you may be disappointed by the shade of blue, let’s look at the overall positive here, the simple removal of those silver arches up the sides and over the arms upgrades this design considerably.
Hey, it wouldn’t be the Buffalo Sabres if they were to do exactly what their entire fan base wanted them to do. Some traditions need to continue!
San Jose isn’t changing their design but they are adding one of their new alternate logos to the shoulders… nice!
The St Louis Blues swapped some colours around on their numbers, what once was yellow (or gold, whichever) is now white and vise-versa:
They also added the city flag to the inside collar, bet you didn’t expect the Blues to add red back to their uniforms next season:
The Columbus Blue Jackets have changed their font, bringing their alternate jersey lettering and numbering style over to the home set (and yes, more perforated numbers here):
We knew Edmonton was switching their home jersey to orange but we didn’t know they’d be making so many tweaks to that orange jersey:
The blue is darker, the orange is brighter, the striping on the sleeves and waist have been changed and the numbers have been moved from the shoulder yoke to a more traditional spot. Oh and the name on the back is a new colour:
Hard to see there but the Oilers are also making use of that new perforated number style. A number of teams making changes today are but the vast majority of teams are not. I counted six of the thirty-one teams in the league doing this, these new single-layer perforated numbers weigh 60% less than the numbering on previous jerseys:
The Ottawa Senators whom you see above (and below… Senators sandwich!) were another team we heard a lot of speculation about. I shared my wish for a return to black at home with horizontal striping (a wish some of you took as fact!). Turns out the change is much more subtle than that:
They merely translated the Reebok Edge panel colouring over to the AdiZero jersey cut, collar loses the red and fills it in with black. Sorry. Not much to see here.
Boston made a small but good move, removing the black from their name and numbers:
Yellow and white, just like the old days!
A few minor changes as we look at some new “hanger tags”. The Dallas Stars have added “Victory Green” to the inside of their collar, it had previously read the much less creative “STARS”:
While the Arizona Coyotes breathe a little bit of life into their set and then hide it all away where you can never see it while it’s being worn:
That’s it, those are your big changes. No three stripes down the arms, up the sides… not bad though right? New Jersey Devils aside I don’t think any team took a step backwards today, sure there were a few lateral moves (Ottawa!), but most of these teams made small changes to upgrade their design. That’s a winning day in my books.
Our focus in this post, obviously was on those who made changes, most teams did nothing more than bring their existing design over to the new jersey cut.
You can see the entire collection of teams broken down by division, click any graphic for a much, much larger version to get a closer look:
If you’re wondering about the road white jerseys, those are up to each team to unveil but we’ve been hearing that most teams will be showing them off at their individual draft parties this Friday night. Stay tuned for that.
And please be sure to keep checking back here and on our Twitter feed @sportslogosnet for more information about the big launch, we’re actually at the unveiling event for this in Las Vegas right now so we’re there gathering as much information as we can and taking all sorts of detailed photos as you’re reading this! Ain’t no rest for us!
UPDATE (The morning after…)
Well I’m exhausted, but here’s what we saw at the party.
The evening was hosted by Canadian comedian Russell Peters who seemed to be largely unknown to the local press covering the event despite being a fairly huge star performer to my crew and the few other members of the Canadian media who made the trek. Was a treat to see him do his thing live even if the room full of journalists stood there stone-faced.
The Vegas Golden Knights are going with a grey helmet and *white* gloves at home. The grey helmet is a first, let’s just be thankful it isn’t gold because we’re pretty sure that was something this team would have considered at some point. A look at their full head-to-toe uniform from the event:
We also got to see the full uniform set for the pre-existing 30 other clubs and there were a few surprise moves there, including the Boston Bruins ditching the yellow socks with their black uniform. The Bruins have basically *always* worn a yellow sock with their full-time dark uniform, it’s been replaced with a Pittsburgh Penguin looking sock, black with gold and white stripes, similar to what they wore with their alternate uniform between 2009-2016:
Columbus introduced an entirely-new sock design to go with the changes to the font on their home jersey:
Despite most the league switching to simplified patches and emblems, the Blackhawks said “Nah!” and kept their old-school chain-stitching on both their jersey and shoulder crests.
You keep doing you, Chicago.
We also got a good look at all the new inside collar designs (yeah, I know, Dallas is in there twice):
I’m hearing that there have been a few teams who have since unveiled their road white sets, check back soon for that batch of updates.
Related stories:
NHL Announces Sites of 2022 All-Star, Outdoor Games, and Draft 
Retro Uniforms for NHL Outdoors at Lake Tahoe 2021 
2020 Stadium Series: Logos, Uniforms and More 
Avalanche 2020 Stadium Series Uniform “a Glimpse Into Future of Hockey” 
Several New Road Jerseys Unveiled on NHL Draft Day 
Over a Dozen NHL Teams Getting New Uniforms in 2017-18 
The 7 Best-Dressed Stanley Cup Finals of the Past 25 Years 
Photos from St Patricks Day 2012
