The home and away jerseys for all six teams in the Professional Women’s Hockey League officially dropped Thursday morning, a little more than three weeks before the puck officially drops on season two.
Opinions are flying around — as they so often do — about the best and worst looks in the PWHL, so Sportsnet reached out to an expert in sportswear to get some historically based insight and opinions on how each team fared with their jersey designs.
Since 1997, Chris Creamer of Port Perry, Ont., has been following and documenting sports jerseys and team branding from around the world at Sportslogos.net. His favourite hockey jersey of all time belongs to the NHL’s former Hartford Whalers, which also explains the PWHL jersey Creamer ranks at No. 1.
Overall, 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 details. Here’s Creamer’s list, ranked worst to best:
6. OTTAWA CHARGE
Creamer calls the jerseys that’ll be worn by players 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 biggest criticism is that Ottawa embraced dark gray as the secondary colour. “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 big fan of the colours this team chose, and the way 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.”
But Creamer feels Minnesota didn’t do enough to incorporate the logo throughout the jersey.
“With a name like Frost, icicles — go all in on that. The logo does it, but nowhere else on the jersey does it. They don’t really embrace the fact that they have a cool, unique identity. Even the symbols within the numbers is just the team’s logo, a silhouette over and over again.
“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 has been a fair bit of criticism around New York’s name, but Creamer doesn’t understand 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 team’s colour scheme, but again feels more could have been done with the logo.
“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. “But the logo leaves a lot to be desired. I see what they were trying to do with it, but I don’t know if it really works. It doesn’t seem very special 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 team’s nickname has yet to resonate with Creamer, or with his kids, 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 big fan of the blue and gold Toronto uses.
“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. “But the whole story about Toronto being the ‘Queen City?’ I don’t know anyone in Toronto who’s ever called it the ‘Queen City.’ The Wikipedia page does, that’s one of the six nicknames Toronto has. So I guess that’s what they used to figure 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 near the top of Creamer’s list, in large part because of Montréal’s nod to hockey history.
“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, though he says the bright 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. “But incorporating that fleur-de-lis style from their primary crest and the numbers too is also a great move.
“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 incorporate the logo and identity throughout, 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.”
Home replica jerseys are now available for purchase at The Official PWHL Shop. Jerseys will be available in stores like Canadian Tire, Sport Chek and Pro Hockey Life starting on Nov. 14, and will also be sold at games this season.
