NHL and Fanatics unveil new jerseys for the 2024-25 season

 

The NHL and fans introduced the new player jerseys for the 2024–25 season on Wednesday. According to the officials, the jerseys have undergone extensive testing and refinement before being used in games this autumn.

This is the first time the business has created and manufactured in-game apparel for a major professional sports league in North America with its own branding. Using the same factory that has produced hockey sweaters for decades, Fanatics was attacked for Major League Baseball uniform flaws, which MLB and the MLB Players Association later claimed Nike was responsible for and was rectifying for the upcoming season.

“This is a huge moment for our company, our 22,000 employees, really to demonstrate what we can do when we have full control over the end-to-end process,” Fanatics Commerce CEO Andrew Low Ah Kee told The Associated Press. “We all take a lot of pride in the work that we do. Ultimately, it’s not about the words that come out. It’s about the actual product and we’re excited to have that on players and equally with fans because the proof is going to be in the actual product.”

According to the league, players from all 32 teams had the opportunity to see, feel, and try on the new jerseys, including playoff MVP Connor McDavid, Florida Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov, teammate Matthew Tkachuk, brother Brady Tkachuk, and two-time champions Steven Stamkos and Nikita Kucherov.

NHL VP and general manager of Fanatics, Keith Leach, stated that the firm had to add an additional layer of reinforcement to address "board burn" wear and tear that dissolved sleeves in one of the early prototypes created in 2023. He claimed that when the alteration was tested out on a few summer skates and tweaked before proceeding further in the process, equipment managers responded favorably to it.

“The players got to see it — not every player but (more than 100) players got to see it — before the playoffs,” Leach told the AP. “That way there’s no surprise of, ‘It just showed up in my locker room in training camp and there’s my jersey."

Many baseball players responded to Nike's alterations to MLB jerseys in a negative way during spring training. In a message distributed to players by the MLBPA in late April, Fanatics founder and CEO Michael Rubin claimed that his business manufactured everything in accordance with Nike's requirements, calling it "entirely a Nike issue" for "innovating something that didn't need to be innovated."

The NHL and fans wanted to minimize the changes, and in March 2023 they negotiated a 10-year deal. Sports teams were prohibited from rebranding, with the noteworthy exception of the Arizona Coyotes, who relocated to Salt Lake City in April and are currently known as the Utah Hockey Club

“I’m proud of what the Utah Hockey Club has done under very, very short time frames,” longtime NHL executive VP of marketing Brian Jennings told the AP. “I think when the uniform comes out, despite all the people that are online and they say what they do — we’ve all experienced that — you’ll see a world-class uniform and an evolving brand structure from the Utah Hockey Club.”