Colorado Avalanche: This Could be the 2017-18 Adidas Jersey

The Colorado Avalanche admittedly isn’t close to the league’s top when it comes to jersey designs. The reason is mainly the weird piping, and even without it, most fans would prefer the mountain jersey Joe Sakic once wore.

More from Mile High Sticking

With the new Adidas jersey deal reportedly in place, a lot could change about that. If Adidas comes up with their very own template, the piping of the Reebok Edge jerseys may finally be eliminated. However, since Adidas is Reebok’s parent company, simply putting Adidas branding on existing Reebok jerseys would also be possible.

On a related note, it is believed that the NHL may be planning to introduce jersey advertisements with the new manufacturer. Jersey ads don’t really have anything to do with Adidas, since they would entirely be the league’s and teams’ decision, but by introducing both changes at once, the NHL would just “get it over with”.

There has been a lot of talk about what those Adidas jerseys, as well as the advertisements, may look like. Adidas stripes, several sponsors at once and even shrinking the logo and putting it in a corner, while featuring the sponsor’s logo front and center, have been talked about. That is — in my personal opinion — completely unrealistic. So instead, here is what I believe would be a realistic jersey for the Colorado Avalanche’s 2017-18 season.

A Colorado Avalanche jersey, including advertisements, could look like this. Concept by Janik Beichler.

The concept is just something I put together in a few minutes, so don’t judge the whole thing simply by that. What we are looking at, is a Colorado Avalanche jersey made by Adidas, featuring the logo of Pepsi — one of the Avalanche’s main sponsors. Now, is it all that bad?

To start, let’s just imagine the jersey without the Pepsi ad. We got rid of the piping, while moving on to a modernized version of the Joe Sakic era jersey. The difference compared to back then, instead of having the manufacturer’s logo on the hem or under the collar on the back of the jersey, it is now featured on the front.

Comparing the NHL to soccer or European hockey doesn’t make any sense.

Adidas has made hockey jerseys before, e.g. for the University of Wisconsin, and none of them have featured Adidas striping. It seems incredibly unrealistic to expect that for the NHL, especially considering that some of the jerseys — eg. that of the Montreal Canadiens — haven’t changed since the club’s establishment. However, the University of Wisconsin had a little Adidas logo on the front — can that be tolerated?

Next up are the advertisements. There have been a lot of comparisons to soccer and European hockey teams. Neither one of those comparisons makes any sense.

In soccer, club logos haven’t been shrunk and demoted to the corner of the jersey. Instead, having a small logo on the player’s heart is the historical look of soccer kits. No logo has been shrunk or moved in order to add in a sponsor’s logo.

More from Mile High Sticking

Home/Avalanche News