“Sooner or later, everything old is new again,” author Stephen King once said.
In the case of hockey jerseys, nothing could be further from the truth right now.
Fresh on the heels of a highly successful Reverse Retro look that swept across the entire league, we’re hearing the LA Kings are about to further embrace their past.
Following up on our report from last month — where we broke news about the Kings (temporarily) retiring their silver alternate jerseys for at least the 2021-22 season — we’ve now uncovered a few more details.
It’s sounding like LA’s new alternate jersey is expected to be an updated version of their classic early ’90s look. Some of the specifics still haven’t fully come to light. However, here’s a brief overview of what we’ve gathered:
— The new jersey will most likely feature a white shell… and that could make things a bit tricky. From what we understand, there was some consideration given to introducing this jersey as more of a full-time fourth jersey, rather than the official alternate (aka third jersey). Given the supply chain challenges across the world right now, it’s likely the NHL and Adidas weren’t too keen on having to produce another line of jerseys in the coming 12 months. Thus, this new white jersey will be the Kings only alternate jersey for 2021-22. As we noted in the original article, LA will only wear three jerseys this season – the usual home black and road white, along with this new alternate jersey.
— Many have asked, so we’ll pass it along again; the Reverse Retro program was always intended to be a one year deal. So, that jersey was never really on the table as an option for 2021-22. As mentioned here, there has been talk of Reverse Retro II happening as soon as the 2022-23 season (with our mock up included at that link).
— If they do in fact go with a white jersey, how many games will the Kings actually be able to wear these new white alternates? Until 2003, NHL teams wore white jerseys at home and opponents wore their road colors as visitors. For nearly 20 years now, that’s flipped and the home team now wears the colored jersey. There are special exceptions, yet that requires the coordination of both teams. Essentially, the home team has to ask the visiting team to bring extra laundry on the road with them (their own colored jerseys, instead of their usual white jerseys). Many teams ran into this issue last year when they wanted to wear their new Reverse Retro jerseys at home, only to find it wasn’t so easy to convince other teams to bring their whites on the road.
— Let’s talk about silver too. Building on the last paragraph, coordinating with other teams wasn’t an issue for LA’s previous alternate jersey, their silver sweaters. And we have two comments here. First, through the years, several people have attempted to argue about the color of that jersey, saying it was more gray than silver. Well, similar to Forum Blue being used as a euphemism for purple, perhaps we should refer to last year’s alternate jerseys as being Staples Silver.
On the flip side, there likely won’t be any debate this time around. It appears the Kings new alternate jersey will in fact have silver accents, not gray. The material sounds like it will be a true, shimmery silver.
— Given what’s currently en vouge around the NHL, there is a possibility the crest on the front of this jersey will be larger than the original crest featured on the 1988 jersey. We also haven’t received final confirmation if the crest will match the original silver design or if they’ll opt to make it black, like the one used on Ontario Reign jerseys. We’ve mocked up both below.
— Allegedly, the overall jersey was still going through final tweaks and changes as recently as a few weeks ago. It’s definitely been an ongoing work in progress, as they say. Although we haven’t seen a final version of the sleeve, we think the area below the elbow will be either black or silver. We mocked this up both ways, as well.
— All layouts below were created by our longtime jersey designer, Justin Cox. He’s done an amazing job through the years of breathing life into what we’ve heard or seen regarding new jersey designs. Truly, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Possible Preview: LA Kings New Alternate Jersey for 2021-22 NHL Season
We anticipate having more concrete information regarding the new jersey very soon.
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Significant Changes Coming to LA Kings Jerseys for 2021-22 Season
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These jerseys are fantastic. I love them. I grew up in LA as nd followed the Kings when they played at The Great Western forum. Go Kings. Have championship season
How about some GOT DAMN color in these jerseys?!?!