The Chicago Blackhawks haven’t had an alternate jersey since 2011, and that reportedly won’t change next season. The team will be sticking to only home and road jerseys — like the other 30 NHL teams as part of the start of a new uniform contract with adidas, according to Michael Russo of the Star Tribune.
Russo reports that all 31 NHL teams (don’t forget Vegas!) will only wear two sweaters, with no alternates, next season when adidas replaces Reebok as the league’s official uniform maker. Moving to only two uniforms per team will make it easier for adidas to implement the league-wide changes without having alternates further complicate things.
This will reportedly lead to some choices for different franchises, as Russo says the Wild are currently “deciding whether to go with red or green home sweaters.” Presumably the Blackhawks don’t have that issue since they’ll proceed into next season sticking with the usual home reds and road whites they’ve worn for years.
The Hawks haven’t had an alternate jersey since the 2010-11 season, when they were still occasionally wearing the black throwback alternates they rolled out at the Winter Classic. They’ve kept it simple with the red and white since then, and now that adidas is taking over, this shouldn’t be much of an issue.
There are other questions worth asking, though. There’s a good chance adidas makes some stylistic tweaks to differentiate its new uniforms from the old ones made by Reebok. What will those changes look like? And this could also be the time for the league to test out adding advertising to uniforms. Could the league and adidas get away with an advertisement shoulder patch if they nail the designs in general? Probably.
Now, I always kinda liked the black jerseys the team wore in the 2000s, which you can see Jonathan Toews rocking in the picture above, but I can also understand why they opted to go back to the red and white that’s repped the team for so long. Next season, it’ll reportedly stay that way.