PWHL jerseys ranked: Who nailed the new looks best?

The house and away jerseys for all six groups in the Skilled Ladies’s Hockey League formally dropped Thursday morning, just a little greater than three weeks earlier than the puck formally drops on season two.

Opinions are flying round — as they so usually do — about the finest and worst looks in the PWHL, so Sportsnet reached out to an skilled in sportswear to get some traditionally based mostly perception and opinions on how every workforce fared with their jersey designs.

Since 1997, Chris Creamer of Port Perry, Ont., has been following and documenting sports activities jerseys and workforce branding from round the world at Sportslogos.net. His favorite hockey jersey of all time belongs to the NHL’s former Hartford Whalers, which additionally explains the PWHL jersey Creamer ranks at No. 1.

General, Creamer is impressed with the PWHL’s work. “Coming up with an identity for a new league is always tricky,” he says. “Kudos to the PWHL for giving us a good set of jerseys so that the league looks as professional as it is.”

Now let’s get into the particulars. Right here’s Creamer’s record, ranked worst to finest:

6. OTTAWA CHARGE

Creamer calls the jerseys that’ll be worn by gamers representing the nation’s capital “a missed opportunity.”

“I feel like they have such a vibrant, energetic logo, and then their uniforms just didn’t do anything with it,” he says. “Now, I should point out the numbers. They really incorporated the striping well, the motion lines in the numbers. But when you have a logo that looks like that, to not work that into the rest of the uniforms, to just use very plain traditional style striping?”

Creamer’s greatest criticism is that Ottawa embraced darkish grey as the secondary color. “When you have bold, vibrant yellow in your colours and you choose to barely use it and instead go for a dark, stormy gray, it’s really disappointing,” he says. “I feel like Ottawa really had a chance to do something fun and energetic and bold, especially with a name like ‘Charge.’ And they just didn’t go for it.”

5. MINNESOTA FROST

Creamer is a giant fan of the colors this workforce selected, and the approach they used them on the jerseys.

“Minnesota has really embraced purple as a primary colour. I don’t know if that’s because of the Minnesota Vikings, I don’t know if that’s because Prince loves The Colour Purple,” he says. “I think purple is a unique colour and not a lot of teams use it, so it’s great to see a team really embrace something that’s not used that much and say: ‘You know what? This is going to be ours. We’re going to be the purple team. Nobody else is going to wear purple, so let’s just do it, let’s go all in.’ And they’re doing that with two shades of purple. No other colours. It’s an interesting, bold move.”

However Creamer feels Minnesota didn’t do sufficient to include the brand all through the jersey.

“With a reputation like Frost, icicles — go all in on that. The emblem does it, however nowhere else on the jersey does it. They don’t actually embrace the indisputable fact that they’ve a cool, distinctive identification. Even the symbols inside the numbers is simply the workforce’s brand, a silhouette over and over.

“You can have a lot of fun with the secondary logo with this and try to incorporate it in there. But again, they came up with this ‘F’ design, you know — nothing Minnesota in there.”

4. NEW YORK SIRENS

There was a good bit of criticism round New York’s title, however Creamer doesn’t perceive it. “I love the name, Sirens, especially for a women’s team, and that mythology behind a siren,” he says. “It’s such an underused name. And then a siren in hockey means you scored a goal. I feel like there’s a lot of good overlap there for a professional women’s hockey team to use the name Sirens. I’m glad to see New York go with that.”

He’s a fan of the workforce’s color scheme, however once more feels extra may have been carried out with the brand.

“It’s the same colours that their WNBA team [the Liberty, who won the league championship last month] uses and nobody else in New York uses. So this is a colour scheme that really seems to be embraced by women’s sports in New York, and I think that’s fantastic. It’s great that the women get their own look within such a big city. It’s easy to get lost in that huge sports landscape in New York,” Creamer says. “However the brand leaves lots to be desired. I see what they have been making an attempt to do with it, however I don’t know if it actually works. It doesn’t appear very particular to me.

“But the colour scheme and the name is where I really fall in love with this whole Sirens identity.”

3. TORONTO SCEPTRES

This workforce’s nickname has but to resonate with Creamer, or together with his children, aged 8 and 11.

“It’s the name that I really can’t get behind and maybe it’ll grow on me over time. It’s tricky to pronounce. It’s tricky to say. My kids have no idea how to say it or spell it,” he says, of ‘Sceptres.’ “Now, on the other side, it looks like Taylor Swift’s logo. So maybe you reach the kids that way. I don’t know.”

Creamer is a giant fan of the blue and gold Toronto makes use of.

“I love the colours. They remind me of the St. Louis Blues in terms of design and colour scheme, and that’s the look that nobody can have a problem with,” he says. “However the entire story about Toronto being the ‘Queen City?’ I don’t know anybody in Toronto who’s ever known as it the ‘Queen City.’ The Wikipedia web page does, that’s certainly one of the six nicknames Toronto has. So I suppose that’s what they used to determine it out.

“I like the logo, I like the colour scheme. The uniforms are okay. It’s just the name is a little clumsy and the origin story behind it seems to be put together by somebody who may not have ever been to Toronto before.”

2. MONTRÉAL VICTOIRE 

This one lands close to the high of Creamer’s record, largely due to Montréal’s nod to hockey historical past.

“It’s certainly very traditional embracing the burgundy, maroon colour. For people who don’t know NHL history too much, Maroons was an early Montreal hockey team, so I don’t know if that’s where they’re going with that,” he says.

“What I love about the Montreal uniform is it’s very traditional and the goalie [Ann-Renée Desbiens] wearing the old-fashioned pads in the promo photos… That really goes all in on the fact that this is a team that’s embracing a very traditional look.”

Creamer likes the Victoire crest, although he says the shiny blue stripe stands out “as a little unusual.”

“Not that it doesn’t look good, it’s just don’t have an explanation for it,” he says. “However incorporating that fleur-de-lis type from their main crest and the numbers too can also be a terrific transfer.

“For a city that is so rooted in hockey history like Montreal is, this is a team that knew their audience, that knew their market, that knew their city where they play and they really said: ‘Yes, let’s go with who we represent.’”

1. BOSTON FLEET

It’s Boston who “really nailed it,” in Creamer’s opinion.

“They did the most to make this feel like the uniform matches the overall identity of the team,” he says. “The waves in the ‘B,’ the fact that it looks like an anchor turned on its side. There’s a little bit of the [Hartford] Whaler connection with the colours and the style, the logo. The waves and the numbers on the back of the jersey, I love that little nod.”

This jersey does the most to include the brand and identification all through, Creamer notes.

“Compared to the other teams in the PWHL, the Fleet really took that extra step to go a little more unique with their striping. The Fleet have all those additional stripes on the sleeves, the stripes around the waist. It really gives you the impression that this is a team that represents something in the water — there’s an ocean theme to it,” he says. “I think the Fleet really nailed it when it came to embracing their overall new identity.”

Dwelling reproduction jerseys at the moment are out there for buy at The Official PWHL Shop. Jerseys might be stocked in shops like Canadian Tire, Sport Chek and Professional Hockey Life beginning on Nov. 14, and also will be offered at video games this season.

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