Carolina Hurricanes: Reviewing the new All-Star Jerseys

The new All-Star Jerseys are finally here. But how do we rate them and how do they compare to ones from season’s past, especially for the Hurricanes?

They are finally here, the all new NHL All-Star jerseys! This year the NHL All-Star weekend will be hosted by the St.Louis Blues and every NHL team, including the Carolina Hurricanes, will have representation from their teams to compete in the skills event and the All-Star tournament.

Each year the All-Star game bring in several new and exciting concepts to the sport. The skills event is an exciting way to pit the best of the game against each other in a more individually competitive environment and this year will pit them against at least one female player who, as Kendall Coyne Schofield showed last year, can put up good numbers against the men.

The All-Star game also features a tournament between the four divisions. That usually meant that each division would be getting their own jersey to represent them in the tournament. Last year however there was a change that made two separate style of jerseys across the board, a light and a dark, with the representative’s team dead and center instead of the NHL shield.

That was probably the result of research into sales of these jerseys and last year’s jerseys were simply spectacular. The simplicity of the logos and the fact that there was an environmental plus made them a favorite among fans. This season the All-Star Jerseys took a similar route with three simple differences.

The first and most obvious difference was the addition of some color. For the Carolina hurricanes that meant the simplified logo was now colored red. However without the black the color seems to be off, perhaps in person these would look a little different, but off the bat, it looks too bright for my liking.

The second addition is the five horizontal grey/white stripes behind the logo that also appear on the sleeves. These are reminiscent of the musical lines found in written music. Sure enough the only team this looks somewhat understandable behind is the hometown blues, who’s logo is a flying musical note.

Back back to the coloring again for a second:

The brightness and single tone of the colors however is a consistency across the league’s teams. One color and white. For teams such as the Maple leafs, Lightning and the hosting Blues, that seems to be no problem as that is no different than their original logo. Teams with more complex logos seem to struggle:

https://twitter.com/NHL/status/1214956226066432004

The final change, and one that concerns me a little, is the positioning of the All-Star logo on the jerseys. Instead of being on the shoulders, these have opted to have them on a single sleeve, the right sleeve, and worn as a badge. The reason it concerns me is that this is where the sleeve numbers would regularly be.

This could be an artistic change with the numbers being moved elsewhere, like the shoulders or lower on the sleeve, or they could be doing away with the sleeve number all together, at least on that right sleeve. That would be a strong shame as it would be an opportunity to run the number across the musical lines similarly to the team logos.

A single sleeve numbering style would be unsymmetrical and a little disjointing to see as well. This would in-fact be my least favorite part of this jersey that I am already not enjoying the more I think about it. At least not from the perspective of a Carolina Hurricanes fan.

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To recap, this new All-Star jersey took a concept that was beloved from last season and somehow managed to instead of improve on it, make it almost universally hated. But all is not lost. For fans of teams that have a single color, the jersey is not a terrible one (unless they completely ruin the sleeve numbers).

For me as a Carolina Hurricanes fan, the color of the team logo is incorrect, the positioning of the All-Star logo has me seriously concerned, and quite frankly I am extremely disappointed. Adjustments I would give would be to return the team logos to the simple black and white versions (look at how clean LA’s looks) and bring the All-Star Logos to the shoulders where they belong.

Then. You can have my money.

But this is only my opinion on the matter. You are allowed to agree or disagree with my thoughts on this. What you aren’t allowed to disagree with is the fact that you need to go and vote for Teuvo Teravainen RIGHT NOW. Go to www.nhl.com/all-star-ballot and vote ten times. GO!

Question for CC Readers: What do you think of the new All-Star Jerseys?