Hustlin' Huskies

While I usually am busy on Friday and Saturday nights with life events, I'll occasionally stop for a hockey game. This weekend would have been one of those times if I lived in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, but I did my best to catch as much of the action as I could last night with the Huskies men's hockey team looking a little spiffier than they normally do. There are a variety of reasons why teams opt to wear different uniforms, but some of the best reasons are due to a team's history. The Saksatchewan Huskies dipped into their past to find their latest heritage jersey design, and the threads looked pretty sweet out on the ice as they battled the Golden Bears!

The weird thing is that I can't find any specific reason why the Huskies opted for the new "old jerseys" on the right. Normally, we see teams crafting a heritage jersey if they're playing an outdoor game or there's some sort of special anniversary they're celebrating, but this just seems like a heritage jersey for a heritage jersey's sake. Make no mistake that they look good and the Huskies should be proud of this jersey, but I was hoping to find a reason for them designing and wearing these jerseys. In any case, let's look deeper into these heritage jerseys.

The cream-coloutred jerseys as heritage jerseys have been done to death, but the simplicity of a two-colour jersey works really well here. The green and the cream colours blend nicely without needing a lot of accent colours, and that simplicity is something we don't see a lot any longer. The throwback logo with the "hustlin' Huskie" on the front is used most often by the men's alumni team, but the logo gets a bigger stage this season with it becoming the chest logo on heritage jersey. The names and numbers on the back are clean and easy to read, but I'm not sold on the captaincy letters being contrasted with cream-on-green. That seems unnecessary.

I am disappointed that everything on the jersey is sublimated rather than getting a fully-embroidered masterpiece. Everything on this jersey screams for an old-school embroidery job, but the players took the ice with logos, names, and numbers sublimated onto their jerseys. Again, I get that there's a significant cost if these jerseys were going to feature embroidered work, but why not do this jersey right? It looks fantastic, so give it the full old-time hockey treatment. That seems like a big miss here.

There are some who have mentioned that this jersey is simply a "Saskatchewan-ized" version of the Calgary Flames' heritage jersey worn at the 2023 NHL Heritage Classic. I can't really deny that as the jerseys are almost thread-for-thread similar in their designs, but the green and cream colours on the Huskies jerseys work so much better together than the Flames' red and nearly-white did. People can dump on the Huskies if they want, but the contrast is what makes their jerseys better than what Calgary wore at the 2023 Heritage Classic.

If there's a plus for these new Huskies throwback jerseys, it's that the team is 2-0 in them after they swept the Alberta Golden Bears by 4-3 and 4-1 scores. The wins put the Huskies atop the Canada West East Division with an 18-4-0 record with two games in-hand on the Golden Bears who own an 18-6-0 record. Even more impressive is the nine-game winning streak that Saskatchewan currently owns, and they'll put that on the line next week in Edmonton against MacEwan. Might we see them wear these jerseys again after the sweep?

The Huskies get a thumbs-up to these jerseys, but there's still room for improvement. I wouldn't say these are perfect by any means, but they are aesthetically well-designed. Assuming the saying is true that if one looks good, one plays good, the Saskatchewan Huskies are living proof of it being verifiably true!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!