Living On Black And Silver

It's no secret that the Los Angeles Kings are a black-and-silver team when it comes to their colour scheme. They switched it up from the purple-and-yellow in 1988 with the arrival of some guy named Gretzky, and they have been toying with those colours ever since. There have been variations on the shades and the usage, but every non-specialty jersey since has had some combination of black-and-silver on it. And that carried on tonight as the Los Angeles Kings shocked the hockey world with an alternate jersey unveiling right before their season-opening game against the Colorado Avalanche.

I often wonder why teams create alternate jerseys that are the same colour as one of their primary jerseys, but that seemed to not be a factor in the Kings' thinking based on what the Kings wore tonight.

I'm not sure about this, but turning their 2010-14 Legends Nights' jerseys black-and-silver isn't all that special, and it seems like this might be one of the laziest alternate "designs" that any team has shown. The Kings have all sorts of possibilities they could use, but they changed the colours? C'mon, Kings. Give an ounce of effort!

As you can see to the right, there isn't much to be excited about on these alternates. They already have a black jersey they'll wear at home, so adding another makes zero sense. The design is clean without a lot of extra accoutrements that aren't needed so that's a plus, but, as stated above, they literally just recoloured a jersey that had already used in their history. You don't get points for copying work already done, so any of the other design elements are rendered moot. You can point to the lace-up collar as being new, but that's been done to death and affects nothing on how the jersey looks. I guess the work being done by Fanatics is simply "if you can't come up with something new, just copy a design from the past and change the colours" which means this is an automatic fail.

I will give the Kings some credit on not having the new alternate jerseys leaked out to anyone prior to the player introductions on the opening night. There were no images out on social media nor did I see a lot of chatter on social media talking about a new alternate jersey. That kind of tight-lipped planning and effort does deserve a tip of the cap in today's "breaking news" world, and the Kings pulled off the jersey switch well after coming out for warmup in their normal home primary jerseys. Kudos to the Kings for that aspect.

I will say that the matte silver helmet is an upgrade over the shiny, metallic helmet they wore last season, and I appreciate the use of the silver helmet to add some contrast and colour to the whole black monochrome look. I know there have been complaints on social media this evening about the helmet, but hockey is a sport that relies on colours so using the "other primary colour" to break up a monochrome design and colour scheme helps immensely.

Overall, this alternate jersey isn't bad, but it's not new and we shouldn't be treating it like it's some revolutionary design for the Kings. Yes, the helmet choice is new for the Kings, but if that's all we're going on for the "new" portion of "new alternate jersey", we're falling into the Washington Capitals' territory of having the same design used over and over and over again. Fanatics and the Kings don't get credit for changing colours on a jersey design that was already used by the Kings in the past, so these two get a thumbs-up for showing the hockey world how well they can use MS Paint.

UPDATE: And the Kings lost 4-1 in this jersey, so the hockey gods may share my disappointment in the Kings' choice for their alternates.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!