I wanted to take a second and talk through the Chicago Blackhawks jersey changes for 2019-20. About a month ago they teased the return of their 2019 Winter Classic sweater for a handful of games. At that point I addressed a leaked image of the forthcoming home jersey with its redesigned collar. Then yesterday, a photo of the white jersey turned up on Twitter.

Tonight I thought it made sense to gather all this Blackhawks news in one article to make it easy to find.

The images at the top of this article are what we have. A toddler version of the red jersey appeared in an online store somewhere—I’m not certain of the original location. The white jersey is a Fanatics replica—all NHL replica jerseys are Fanatics branded. It’s on a hanger apparently in someone’s house. It even has tags on it, which you can see in the original photo, so there may be a store somewhere already selling them. Oops.

There hasn’t been any official word from the team about a jersey change. This is such a minor alteration that I certainly don’t expect anything from them. Having said that, when Blackhawks players have made appearances around town this summer, they’ve been wearing the current collars. So the team isn’t quite ready to acknowledge any change just yet.

Now that you’ve seen the new looks, here’s a reminder of what the Hawks have used for the past two years.

The collar, particularly on the red jersey has drawn comparisons to everything from the Pilgrims to Little Orphan Annie. None of these are quite what you want if you’re an NHL team.

It’s no secret the Adizero collars have been problematic since the beginning, but it seemed important to the decision-makers that the NHL shield get prominent placement. To be honest, I really liked what they were doing with the Reebok Edge collars over the past decade, but I guess sometimes you just have to be different to be different.

In any case, the Blackhawks and Adidas did recognize this issue and decided it could be fixed by chopping back the color blocking on the collar—as opposed to filling in the pentagon on which the NHL shield sits. I’m not sure either was necessarily a winner, but it’s what we get.

Since I don’t have anything else constructive to say on this subject, I’ll just wrap up with a look at one of my favorite sweaters of the past few years. I’m so happy to see the Blackhawks’ outdoor throwback making a return this season. I wish they’d declare it a full-time third with a 15-game schedule, but three is greater than zero and I can call that a win.

It’s such a great tribute to the past and this team is so well-positioned for it given their unique uniform history.

And that’s probably all I’ll have to say about the Blackhawks until their next outdoor game—so probably in like a year then.

Update | Aug 25

Just two days after I wrote this, we got our first look at the new Blackhawks home jersey in the wild. Upper Deck shared a photo on Twitter of Chicago prospect Kirby Dach in the new sweater.