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New Canucks Jerseys - They’ve arrived

Well, today’s the big day. Before I give my opinion, here’s a summary (from Canucks.com):

Vancouver, BC – Today the Vancouver Canucks unveiled their new home and away sweaters for the 2007-08 season in front of thousands of fans at General Motors Place. At a mid-day media conference Canucks fans saw five of their favourite players, Markus Naslund, Trevor Linden, Mattias Ohlund, Willie Mitchell and Kevin Bieksa skate onto the General Motors Place ice in their full home blue and road white uniforms for the first time. The combination of the original blue, green and white colouring, along with the Orca Whale celebrates the past and present in Canucks history.

As I watched Markus skate onto the ice at GM Place (It was PVRed.. I wasn’t actually watching it live or in person), my gut reaction was how “busy” the new jersey looks. The “Vancouver” mark is clearly a distraction, in my opinion, and completely unnecessary. And what really surprised me were the horizontal stripes on the arms and body of the jersey. I was fully expecting vertical stripes/lines to create a more modern look, instead I find the new sweater is a hybrid of the Vintage sweater and the Whale.

Enough “constructive” feedback.. there are things I like about the new look. The revisions to the logo make the ice shards look more realistic, particularly on the home jersey, like they’ve actually been fractured.  And of course the color scheme cannot be beat, in my opinion, I’m really happy about that.  And the Stick/Rink Logo on the shoulders is fantastic, probably the highlight for me.

On an interesting note, Dave Nonis said today that league-wide, there will be no third jerseys this year, but teams will have an option for a third jersey for the 2008-2009 season. Which leaves me wondering — will there be another jersey unveiling at this time next year?

(Photo credits: Canucks.com)