why did they change the NHL.....?

Question

home teams jerseys to the darker ones and the visitor's jersy is in white...I think its so stupid like that why did the do that? They should make the home team be in the white jersy/

I don't understand Jessica b's answer....they will always travel with one color, why would they have to bring both?

Answer 1

For the 2003-04 season, the NHL has done a switcheroo of sorts. For the first time since the 1969-70 season -- just before yours truly was born -- the home teams will be donning their dark jerseys at home, while the visiting teams will be dressed in white? Why did they make the move? One of the reasons was logistics -- since teams tended to wear their alternate jerseys at home, that meant some teams had to travel with both their dark and their white uniform sets. That meant twice as many jerseys, socks and helmets to lug around. And with airport security the way it is now (and the way it always should have been, in the author's humble opinion), that made for a ponderous situation. So to make things easier for travel, the dark uniforms are now the home uniforms in the NHL.

Answer 2

Jessica B actually has the right answer. It has to do with 3rd jerseys, which are usually dark (except for Montreal, which has a white 3rd jersey). Except for the airport security thing, that really didn't factor into it.

But they changed from the dark at home to white at home to add color to the game. This lasted from 1969-1970 to 2003-2004. It used to always look the same, your home team wearing darks, the visitors wearing white. This change changed that. Now, the home team looked the same, but the teams visiting would look different. The Red Wings would now be red, the Rangers would be blue, etc.

But, they came up with third jerseys, and that became more equipment (jerseys, socks, and helmets) the teams had to travel with, just in case the home team had a 3rd jersey game.

But, to answer your point about home teams wearing white - white is not an official color for most teams, so wearing your dark jerseys is wearing your colors at home. That isn't as true when you wear white at home.


nyrattlesnake316 - The only sports where home teams wear dark jerseys are football and hockey. Baseball and basketball always wear white (or light) at home, unless it is an alternate jersey, then their pants are still white. The Lakers home jerseys are yellow in the NBA, but they are still the light jerseys.

Wham - they just switched which jersey is worn where, they didn't make new jerseys to replace the dark and white ones. The third jerseys were to increase merchendizing, or to pay homage to teams of the past by wearing their jersey style.

Answer 3

I personally like the change. No one in Calgary will buy a white Flames jersey when the red ones looked so much better. So when they played in white, the fans were wearing red in the stands, so having the players wear the popular dark color jerseys at home was a great choice for many fans. With that, the whole 3rd jersey is out next season when they change to RBK.....the company can not produce all the new jerseys quick enough, so they are delaying the 3rd jerseys for a year or two.

Answer 4

In the NHL’s early years, teams had only one uniform, which was almost always colored. The concept of road whites was introduced by the Red Wings in 1934, and other teams soon followed, but colors were still worn at home (that’s why the Rangers are known as “the Broadway Blues,” for example; in fact, the Rangers didn’t add a white uni until 1951, becoming the final team to do so). The league experimented with wearing white at home for a few seasons in the 1950s but then went back to wearing colors at home. But teams on the road were having the same sorts of laundry problems that baseball teams had experienced decades earlier, so the NHL switched to white at home in 1970 and stayed that way for the next 33 years — this is the period of hockey most of us are familiar with, so we tend to think of white as the natural home color, even though it wasn’t always that way.

The NHL switched back to wearing colors at home in 2003. Why? The official reason was that the league wanted home fans to be able to see the colored uniforms; the unofficial and more accurate reason is that sales of colored jerseys were lagging, so they wanted to give them a higher profile. (A contributing reason: Most NHL teams’ alternate third jerseys are colored, and teams want to wear those at home, which would force their opponents to bring a set of whites with them on the road, so why not just make all home games colored?) Some hockey minor leagues actually have it both ways, wearing white at home for the first half of the season and then switching to white on the road for the second half.

Answer 5

Jessica B's right, with the alternate jerseys and taking their white and dark jerseys, but another reason was so the teams could use or wear more of their team colors in front of their fans.
EX: -With white jerseys you have an all white jersey with a few lines with you team color on it.
-With Dark jerseys teams can have more of their colors. Green jerseys for Dallas, Blue with red stripe for Colombus, and Black and gold for Pittsburgh, ect...

Answer 6

Teams started making third jerseys- often remakes of old designs. They were dark colors, so if the team decided to wear them for their fans at home (common enough) the visiting team would have to bring twice as many jerseys on their road trip- after all, you don't go back home after every game on a road trip. And since 9/11 and increased air security, that's gotten to be more of a hassle, so they switched the colors so they only have to bring one color on the road.

Answer 7

I've cooperated with a few vendors in the past and the under one particular is just the most popular. They own lots of unique jerseys contains rare types that you just cannot get from all other vendors. The product quality and customer service is best you may find online with so cheap price. With this distributor, certainly you're not going to let you or your customers down..

Answer 8

it was to give the fans a look at the away jerseys on home ice at first why they kept this i dont know but with the new style jerseys coming out games played with in the conference they are going back to home team white

Answer 9

The changed trying to get a new audience, I don't know why. Hockey needs to go back to the way it used to be, keep the shoot out, but bring back everything else. Change the Home back to white and the away back to dark, allow the stick play, let goalies where decent size pads, and everything. the NHL isn't getting a new audience and their losing their hardcore fans.

Answer 10

I think they switched it because the darker jerseys were more popular with the fans, so they wanted the fans to be able to see their team in that jersey when they were home.