They’re here! Every last one of them.
This morning, the NHL and Adidas officially revealed the new Reverse Retro jerseys for all 31 teams. That means we have an article here full of photos. Scroll on!
Quick recap, first. Over the past several days, we’ve been getting lots of teasers from Adidas. I enlisted Icethetics concept contributors Orion Taylor and Avi Stein to help illustrate some predictions we made as a group. As we go through each team below, I’ll grade our predictions and add a few comments.
Pacific Division
Here’s a look at the new Reverse Retro sweaters in the Pacific Division.
The standout here, of course, is the Anaheim Ducks. Never in my wildest dreams did I think they’d ever return to that jersey. It gives me hope that LA, Boston and Tampa Bay may all do the same some day. I am a bit surprised to see teal ice, though. Our prediction tried to work around that by using a teal stripe above the ice to distinguish it from the white jersey.
The Coyotes were dead on. The Flames tweaked their striping a bit so it’s not the same as the original. The Oilers went with their standard color logo to avoid the legibility issues of the WHA version. We had the yellow and white inverted on the Kings jersey—and the vintage white I saw in the teasers was just a trick of the light.
The Sharks ended up with a white stripe on the sleeves, making it a remix of their white jersey from 1998. The Vancouver prediction was almost on target. They kept green out of the crest, unfortunately. And the Golden Knights leaked ahead of time so there wasn’t much to predict there.
Metropolitan Division
Next up are the Reverse Retro jerseys from the Metro Division.
I’d be more impressed by the Hurricanes’ Whalers tribute if we hadn’t already seen it in green in recent years. Green is definitely better than grey but this is not a bad look. The Blue Jackets whiffed on the chance to bring Stinger back. For that there should be some sort of punishment.
The Devils look great in green—and you’ll look good wearing it around Christmas! The Islanders could’ve trotted out the Fisherman one more time, but you know Lou would never let that fly. And bizarrely, the Rangers managed a worse version of their Lady Liberty uniforms. Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing that crest again, but what’s up with the striping? I get the need for a remix, but replacing the red cuffs with white would’ve been better than this.
The Flyers and Penguins jerseys were first to leak so no surprises here. Except diagonal wordmark on the Pittsburgh jersey is truer to the original than the Fanatics replica leak was. And then there’s the Capitals. I really wish they’d brought back the blue and bronze. That was a great color scheme.
Central Division
These are the new Reverse Retro uniforms in the Central Division.
We were right about the Blackhawks reversing the white 1940s jersey instead of the black one, but we were slightly off on the crest. They opted for a straight throwback there. And of course it’s huge fun seeing the Nordiques crest back on an NHL sweater. The only thing that would’ve made it better would be to have it in its original colors.
The Dallas Stars are the oddball in this group. It’s a little too white. The area outside the big star probably could’ve been green or black. Meanwhile, the Wild gave us a recolored version of their primary logo on a North Stars jersey. That’s a nice touch.
Another yellow Predators jersey probably wasn’t necessary, but they are leaning into that as their primary color. The Blues prediction was perfect but it helps that the real throwback was used last season. And I know this won’t be a popular opinion, but I love this grey Jets jersey! And frankly, I’m glad we were off on the crest. The navy blue trimmed in white looks so much better.
Atlantic Division
And finally, here are the Atlantic Division’s new Reverse Retro sweaters.
I can state here and now that by Christmas, I will own that Tampa Bay Lightning jersey. As I kid, I always wanted them to have a blue version of their uniforms. Even today, I still don’t understand why this team relies so much on blue and white—colors that are well-covered by other teams—when we could own blue, black and silver. But that’s a discussion for another time.
Boston’s new gold sweater leaked, but one detail was off. The sleeve cuffs are white instead of black. Makes me wonder if the leaked image was a prototype version. Our Sabres prediction was almost spot on! Some of the colors were off in the crest, but surprisingly we nailed everything else. That prediction was one in which I was the least confident.
The Red Wings were on target but for the lack of silver in the crest. Every division has a bummer and this is the Atlantic’s. I was really hoping to be wrong on this one. It’s pretty lackluster. As for Florida, the Adidas team invented a whole new striping pattern, so there was no predicting that one. Meanwhile Montreal is exactly what I forecast when first reporting the Reverse Retros earlier this year.
The Senators were easy to get right, though the obviously went with the new crest over the true original, which had the team name spelled out inside. And lastly, there’s the Maple Leafs. I don’t really know what to say about this. It’s certainly a remix. The jersey base is from 1970-71 while the crest was last used in 1969-70. So technically they do have 1970 in common—but these designs were never used together.
And there we are. It’s been a rough year, and hockey is probably the furthest from the minds of most people. But it’s nice to know that when the next season gets underway, we’ll have a lot of gorgeous games to look forward to.
Now that you’ve seen all the Reverse Retros officially, which ones are your favorite? And which ones would you prefer to see sealed away forever?