Over the past five years, MayorsManor is proud to have been the source that first brought you every LA Kings jersey created for special occasions. We broke the news on the Dodger Stadium outdoor game jersey, had a lot of fun with designs leading up to the second Stadium Series game in Northern California, and then later the 50th Anniversary jersey (which eventually morphed into the current third jersey, aka the sliver jersey).
With preparations in full swing for the Kings to play in the 2020 Stadium Series game vs. the Colorado Avalanche, one of the most common questions is, ‘What will the jerseys look like?’
Here’s what we’ve gathered via multiple sources – expect purple to be included in the jersey. How much purple? That remains a major TBD item on the checklist.
Even so, in an attempt to get in front of things, we’ve been working with one of our artists to put together some early jersey comps. Some of you have already stopped reading and likely skipped ahead to the images below. For others — the people who like details and context — here are some bullet points explaining how we landed on these designs:
– For starters, none of this is concrete. Usually when we post jersey information we have more to go on. For now, the information in this article is more of an educated guess, and somewhat a stitching together of ideas based upon little tidbits picked up in recent months.
– Right out of the gate, some people will read ‘purple’ and start pushing for the original 1967 sweaters. Sorry to say, that doesn’t feel like a good match her. First off, Colorado isn’t from that Second Six group of NHL teams, so it may come off as strange if one team tries to go with a heritage theme and the other has a completely different jersey concept. Doing so also wouldn’t fit the way the NHL does things. Just look at the majority of Stadium Series games. The two jerseys often feel like cousins, with very similar designs, but in slightly different colorways. Thus, the true Forum Blue and Gold jersey doesn’t seem to be a strong option here.
– If they opt for the 1987 purple/gold, it would be closer to the Avalanche era. However, unless Colorado went full retro and wore a Quebec jersey, it once again feels forced. So, again, we don’t see it.
– What about a purple version of the current black/white/silver jerseys? It’s possible; we just fear that fans may riot over something so simple. As evidenced via social media over the past few jersey rollouts, many fans want something unique and different when it comes to outdoor games.
– We also think you can eliminate the Gretzky-style logo because (a) they try to save that for the Ontario Reign and (b) LA is already doing the ’90s era heritage jerseys for two other games this year.
– Add up all the above information and here’s where we’re at: we’ve eliminated the ’67 crown, the ’88 crest, and the current LA crest. That should leave the current crown as the centerpiece of the 2020 Stadium Series jersey.
– As a side note, we actually lobbied for the ‘LA’ shoulder patch from the two previous Kings outdoor games to be re-worked as the crest in 2020 but were overruled. We see this design mark as something the Kings haven’t exploited very much, so it still feels very fresh and it sort of has that futuristic feel the NHL tends to prefer. Yet, one of our designers on this project was adamant that even though it looked great as a shoulder patch, the ‘LA’ doesn’t have the correct proportions to work well as a large jersey crest. We took their word for it and moved on.
– There is a mixed precedent when it comes to one team wearing a color and the other team wearing a white-based jersey. For example, in the Kings first Stadium Series game, both teams wore colored jerseys (as did the Flyers and Penguins last year). Meanwhile, in the Kings-Sharks Stadium Series game, it was a little closer to the traditional white vs. color scheme you see in regular NHL games. This gets tricky when you’re talking about Kings-Avalanche because Colorado uses a lot of blue and burgundy in their color schemes. This would lean one to think, the more the home team uses those colors, the less purple the Kings would have to work with. It’s probably a safe bet that one of the teams will use quite a bit of white, as a tribute to the Air Force Academy, where the game is being played next February.
– Regardless of the design, the expectation is the numbers on the sleeves will be larger than normal. This has been fairly standard in outdoor games for several years now.
– After weighing all of the above information, our design team has come up with three jersey comps as a starting point for the 2020 Stadium Series in Colorado, as pictured below.
For whatever it’s worth, we did a poll similar to this several years ago – featuring six different jersey designs (see below) – and the results were quite interesting.
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POLL: Which Kings 50th Anniversary Jersey Design Do You Prefer?
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I’d like to see the original crown on black and silver.
Where’s the “none of the above” option?