Thoughts on the New Canucks Uniforms

by Jes



I've always been critical of the newer Canucks sweaters and logo. Very corporate, very blah. Apart from the brief period of time where either Jan Bulis or Jiri Slegr donned a Canucks sweater, the Canucks duds have never appealed to me.

So, it was my surprise that I saw the new uniforms, and my first thought was, "Wow, they don't suck!"

Sure, we're still stuck with the corporate logo, but the colour scheme is nice, the VANCOUVER on the front is the nice touch, and the overall look is an improvement on the old design. It's a very nice combination of the old and the new looks into something that really catches the eye, yet isn't too busy and garish.

Honestly, I was just hoping that the Canucks wouldn't screw up like many other teams appear to be doing. I'm certainly not going to go out and buy one of these sweaters (unless Pavol Demitra miraculously ends up as a Canuck), nor would I put this in my Top 10.

Opinion in Vancouver and around the Canucks blogosphere seems rather mixed. Some really like it, and some really hate it.

Alanah at Canucksandbeyond.com:

I was going to add some thoughts about what I think of these, but what the hell does one say? My favorite has always been the stick-in-rink vintage. I’ve never been a big fan of the orca, simply because I saw it more closely associated with the Orca Bay company rather than with my team, but I realize a lot of other people are fans. However, wouldn’t it have benefited from some minor color changes to the logo, to adapt to the new jersey colors?

Anyway, I’ll be sticking with my own vintage Luongo jersey—I hope others are happy with their new-look jerseys.

The Canucks Genome Project is much more vicious:

I don't mind the blue jerseys but the white jersey is "SUPERLAME". A friend of mine commented to me that it looks like we gave a smurf a rectal exam. It's true, we look like we enjoy violating smurfs by becoming smurf proctologists. Here are the photos below.

"Will Dr. Willie Mitchell come to exam room 2!"

JJ at Canucks Hockey Blog really digs the new/old look.

Well, this is something I've said in the past but I do like the simplicity of it. I'm a big fan of the vintage colors and I don't have the same animosity towards the Orca logo as some fans. Save for going back to the vintage stick and rink jersey, this look is probably the next best thing.

Zanstorm, who will be Waiting for Stanley until 2098, has mixed feelings.

But I get this feeling that these new duds may grow on me after a while. Let's face it, they do look sharp. And I can respect that they are trying to tie in history with it. But honestly, I think they should have held a fan competition or even a fan vote on what it should look like. After all, we are the ones putting out our hard-earned money to buy one of these things. (I still won't get it)
In my opinion, the members at the Canucks.com forum with their speculative Photoshop images for the most part made better-looking duds than the actual new ones.

And, to finish us off, Yankee Canuck reveals the 'secret' to the new design.

So, as you can see, the big difference is...it now says Vancouver. Scoff all you want, I see the genius of this: it's a gentle reminder to the opposition of who is about to kick their stupid asses from one end of the rink to the other. Sheer brilliance.

Of course, fans will grow to love the new design if the Canucks do well this season, and will learn to hate it if the Canucks start 12-37-3.