What will the Winter Classic Jersey Look like?

So! Bruins are going to be in Indiana for new year’s day!

Not anyone’s first choice, but...Winter Classic calls, after all.

The Bruins and the Blackhawks will be meeting in South Bend at Notre Dame Stadium for the 2019 outdoor game, and while we know practically everything else other than the starting lineups, we have to ask ourselves what they’re going to end up wearing. After all, it’s part of the fun of the Winter Classic. Looking back through history and dragging old designs up from the depths and giving them new life!

But first, we have to set some ground rules before we even begin to think about this:

• First: we are running under the very google-able fact that South Bend is in fact closer to Chicago than it is to Boston, so Boston will be the away team this year. Further, the Hawks in their past have largely had black jerseys. This means there’s a pretty good chance they’ll go for a white jersey.
• It has to fit on the new Adidas Climalite jersey fabric.
• They probably aren’t going to reuse any previous designs. So the 1926 sweaters and the hybridized 1940’s-50’s sweaters are out.
• Boston since the Fenway Winter classic has abstained from using Brown on their uniforms for awhile, even when it would’ve been more accurate to do so. That may be on it’s way out too so...regretfully, there may be some great past designs that just don’t make it.
• This will be their third jersey from January 1st onward.

Choosing a jersey from history is tough for the Hawks and Bruins, because the Hawks were usually a shade of bad only talked about in legend for literally decades worth of time. There never really was much of a rivalry beyond age and familiarity that didn’t happen after 2008. So any era of Bruins hockey is open to this!

So, let’s look through Bruins history and see which designs fill these parameters perfectly:

Mid 40’s White Sweater: Appearing in a Long Sleeve football Jersey, Your Boston Bruins!

There are many advantages to this particular setup. It’d be playing right into the hands of the degenerate reprobates that Notre Dame pumps out and calls graduates by making it the most football-like that any NHL team has ever worn that isn’t...well...a Blackhawks Jersey from the same time.

However, there is a downside.

And that is I hate this jersey and there is a reason they don’t wear it anymore.

If what we’re asking for is a celebration of hockey through going back to it’s roots, let us remind ourselves that Hockey is quite unlike other sports in that numbers on the front of the sweaters tend to look really...really...really bad. The fabric that literally makes a hockey jersey, the textile that they use, only really likes numbers when they’re on the back of them because of how inflexible that number has to be when they stitch it on there. When players try to break it in? The number gets flexed, bent, and warped. It looks really...really bad whenever they do it. Fans got bent out of shape when the Sabres and Sharks had teeny, tiny numbers on their chests. Why do that with some awkward numbers like 74, or 41?

And because this is the NHL...I think this is probably a front-runner. If nothing else, modern era stitching will ensure that the numbering will be centered.

Mid 30’s: Oversize B joins the party

This is a much simpler, easier to reproduce and classic design from Dit Clapper’s prime that also has the added benefit of looking like a hockey jersey! It’s hard to look at the oversized Bruins B and not think “Yeah...I think that’d be pretty slick to have.” Especially if they decide to forgo making it a white jersey and go for a gold variation!

That’s a big “if” on the other hand. Which might not work in it’s favor. The arguement against is not that it’s bad, but that there are so many other options that honestly going this conservative would be kind of a letdown.

Another simple design you could go with is...

Early 50’s White Sweater: Simple is as simple gets

This period was great for simple hockey design. No frills, no muss, no fuss, just old enough to be retro but timeless enough to be used as a modern third. And even better, it uses the modern color scheme! If they wanted to update the logo by making it slightly bigger and centering it. It’s about as perfect a white/away as you can get.

The argument against it is that...it’s just that. Simple. While it’s a beautiful setup it’s still just so basic that you could easily say to yourselves “why bother” and pick a more interesting one.

Which leads us to...

Late 20’s-Early 30’s: Interesting, Retro, and Uniquely Bruins

Puckstruck.com

I am going to sit atop aesthetic hill and die for this particular sweater. This is a fantastic sweater and I’ll have little to nothing to hear against it.

Further, Boston in all of the many times they’ve made jerseys for their third, this look, which has not been imitated much in the history of the game, has always eluded them. It’s not like it’d be hard to change up the admittedly...brave choice of beige pants. I think it would be a fun little addition to the lineup to have! and definitely not just because I want a newly produced one yesterday.

Of course, the Bruins have dated and updated and re-re-reupdated the classic arched lettering logo thrice over the course of the past decade, so it may behoove them to ignore this particular setup...again.

So....what is your guess then?:

Well, I divided it into three camps: One I want, One I specifically don’t but feel they’d do anyway, and one in the middle.

But now, I leave it to you? What do you think the winter classic sweater will look like? Will it pull from the 20’s and 30’s? 40’s and 50’s? Maybe go contemporary and go for 80’s?