The Best and Worst NHL All-Star Game Jerseys from the Past 25 Years
Last week the NHL unveiled its jerseys for the 2015 All-Star game, describing them as "bold" and "fresh." Naturally, when a professional sporting league markets something as bold and fresh, it generally means "so incredibly ugly that nobody has done it before."
That's what happened this time around. The NHL started out boring, with a plain black and plain white jersey, then added a bunch of gratuitous striping on the arms and sides in chrome and neon green. The result is a reasonable approximation of what a four-year-old boy with a pack of specialty crayons would do to a dull black-and-white jersey scheme.
But how do this year's monstrosities compare with All-Star jerseys from the past? In the following slideshow we look at the past 25 years' worth of jerseys from the NHL All-Star Game and divide them into best (often only by default) and worst.
Some jersey information courtesy of the incredibly helpful NHLUniforms.com.
Best: 2011-14
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By NHL All-Star standards, the league's most recent numbers really weren't that bad. Aside from gratuitous striping on the arms and back, these are reasonably classy jerseys, one blue and black and the other red and white. Not visible in this picture are the stars at the bottom of the jersey, a design element going back to the 1970s.
Worst: 2003
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The jerseys in 2003 lack a lot of the hideous touches that the league likes to put on its All-Star apparel, but they also lack any defining characteristic. What they look like is practice jerseys; they are simple, unadorned and nobody would be surprised to see them at Walmart or Canadian Tire with a $40 price tag.
Not visible in this picture is that each player had his number at his hip on the front of the jersey, a feature that doesn't help much at all.
Best: 2008
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That's not to say that "simple" is a bad instinct; it can be carried off well as the jerseys from 2008 demonstrate nicely. The red-and-blue colour scheme is both simple and classic, while the stars running up the side of the hockey pants and jersey are obvious without being garish. The crests aren't anything special, but there's only so much that can be done with East and West.
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Worst: 2009
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Unfortunately, the simplicity and class of the 2008 jerseys would only last a single year. Red and blue remain the chief colours of the 2009 jerseys, but both jerseys end up incorporating both colours, the crest is notably worse and the stars down the sides are instead moved to one shoulder and arm, and include years in them to note the three previous times Montreal hosted the All-Star Game.
Best: 1992
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One of the things the league does well is nostalgia, and in 1992 the NHL celebrated its 75th anniversary with a throwback design that duplicated the jersey from the league's first official All-Star game. The bars across the shoulders are a little distracting and the anniversary crest is ugly, but the colours are nice and the design is on the understated side.
Worst: 1989-91, 93
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These are the All-Star jerseys of my youth (I'm sure I still have a bunch of McDonald's All-Star Game hockey cards featuring players in these colours), but nostalgia is pretty much the only item in these jerseys' favour. The NHL started trying to make orange and black work for its jerseys in 1960, and it never really found a scheme that looked good.
Best: 2004
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The Minnesota Wild hosted the All-Star game in 2004, and so the league leaned heavily on their colours and a vintage feel. They aren't spectacular by any stretch of the imagination, but they avoid the principal sin of All-Star jerseys, which is an abundance of stars and stripes and ridiculous colours for the sake of having an abundance of stars and stripes and ridiculous colours.
Worst: 1994-97
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Like the 2004 jerseys, these versions, which made their debut a decade earlier, lean on simplicity, with one huge star on the front (a design that the Dallas Stars would eventually borrow). These really aren't that bad; if we were ranking all 10 of the jerseys in this slideshow they'd probably come in right after the Minnesota-based jerseys of the previous slide.
Best: 2007
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The difference between these jerseys and the superior 2008 version is primarily the crest, which is a little blander here. Otherwise the key elements are in place; one jersey in red, one in blue (better than both jerseys making use of both colours) with both having the stars down the sides.
Worst: 1998-99
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The ludicrous "North America vs. the World" format for the game started in 1998. It was an understandable attempt to create something more interesting than East vs. West, but it ended up pitting fierce international rivals together on the same teams. The jerseys themselves weren't very interesting, with a V-shape that's hard to see in this photo and giant flags on the front of each jersey.
Best: 2000-01
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The format was forced, but in 2000 the league at least adopted some interesting-looking jerseys for the North America vs. World All-Star Game. The horizontal bar across the front, offset NHL logo on one side and unique goalie jerseys (the goalies wore reversed versions of their team's sweaters) at least added an element of interest to these outfits.
Worst: 2002
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And we're back to the practice jerseys. These are like the 2003 sweaters from earlier, except for the World vs. North America game rather than an East vs. West one. Like a lot of the jerseys on this list (from both the best and worst categories) these ones aren't hideous (aside from the hip number, which puts them over the edge) but rather sort of blandly unmemorable.
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