Wait till you see the jerseys combined with the rest of the uniforms too.
Each team will wear its Hometown Remix uniform several times this season, starting with the Florida Panthers, Chicago Blackhawks and San Jose Sharks on Monday.
These are three strong examples:
-- The Panthers, who host the Detroit Red Wings (7 p.m. ET; DSN, SCRIPPS), are one of two teams whose Hometown Remix uniforms will feature a color never used before in the NHL. They’ll wear coral. (The Vegas Golden Knights will incorporate jade.)
The main logo is an updated version of the secondary logo, with a hockey stick and palm tree crossing in front of a sunrise. Taking cues from a graphic beach tee and the colors that reflect off the Atlantic Ocean, the whole jersey evokes a South Florida sunrise with coral, orange, yellow and navy. Amerant Bank Arena, the Panthers’ home, is in the city of Sunrise, Florida.
-- The Blackhawks, who host the Colorado Avalanche (8 p.m. ET; CHSN+, ALT), made a simple, stunning change. The green that has been a complementary color in the primary and secondary logos is now the main color instead of red.
You might think the jersey looks much the same otherwise. Look closely, though. The stars from the Flag of Chicago are embossed on the sleeves.
-- The Sharks, who host the Calgary Flames (9 p.m. ET; NBCSCA, SN+, TVAS), will wear scuba blue, a lighter shade of teal. The “SJ” mark is front and center, with a shark swimming between the letters, its jaws open wide.
Shark teeth, complete with pink gums, chomp around the sleeves and socks.
The NHL will feature Hometown Remix in 261 games this season, including 19 games with both teams wearing the uniforms.
“It’ll start some conversation, it’ll start some buzz and then that discovery is so critically important, because you didn’t just create a new uniform just to create a new uniform and not give it a lot of thought,” Jennings said. “There is a tremendous amount of thought and consideration that goes into every little thing. Every little piece of it is designed with intent.”
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For the Heritage Classic and Winter Classic, the uniforms are retro. For the Stadium Series, they’re progressive.
This is different in scale and style.
Ideally, it takes 18 months to design two uniforms for just one outdoor game, although sometimes the timeframe is shorter due to scheduling. The folks who design uniforms for the entire NHL for a project like this must do it in only two years.
“It is a Herculean effort,” Jennings said.
The NHL unveiled its first League-wide alternate uniform program Nov. 16, 2020, when it partnered with Adidas. It was called Reverse Retro, and the idea was to mine each team’s jersey archive and team colors, remixing them to create something new and never seen before.
Building on the success of that program, NHL and Adidas unveiled Reverse Retro 2022 on Oct. 20, 2022, doubling down on the design formula.
Initially, some teams were conservative. Over time, more bought into the idea.
“They’re like, ‘OK, I get it. This is really good. Let’s lean into the design markers that these guys are setting up,’” Jennings said.
The NHL began partnering with Fanatics in 2024.
While starting to think about the program that would become Hometown Remix, they used technology to try new things for the uniforms at the 4 Nations Face-Off, a best-on-best tournament in 2025.
The details included debossed maple leaf vines for Canada, blue and white split-coloring for Finland to represent the sky meeting the horizon, a sleek flag design for Sweden, and the debossed motto “E Pluribus Unum” from the Great Seal of the United States.
“You saw a little bit of a teaser with 4 Nations, right?” Fillion said. “To me, 4 Nations was a great proof of concept. It really resonated extremely well with the fans and with teams. … I think these are all things that we added up over the years, and the Hometown Remix becomes this really melting pot of all the latest and greatest work.”
The idea behind Hometown Remix was to look forward and create new stories based on what was important to fans in each market.
Although there would be some recurring elements -- check out the inside of the lower hem on each jersey -- there was no paint-by-numbers formula.
Fanatics and the NHL worked closely with each team, involving everyone from owners to equipment managers, depending on the situation.
“The team’s brand is still at the core of the play,” Fillion said. “‘What are those elements that are really hyperlocal that only the fan in your city would know?’ It was a great way to jump start the conversation.”
Jennings said Fanatics and the NHL usually showed each team three paths its uniform could take, and then there would be a lot of back and forth -- designing, refining, refining some more.
“We always want the teams to have a point of view,” Jennings said. “‘Are we missing something? Is there a color you wanted to experiment with? Is there a color that’s important in your hometown?’ Getting that feedback I think makes the buy-in loop just that much stronger.
“At the end of the day, it is their brand, right? Hometown Remix might be the moniker we’re marketing, but they’ve got to feel good about where it’s going, and so there’s a lot of collaboration and cooperation in that.”
The teams bought in more than ever before.
“They understood what we were trying to do,” Fillion said. “The NHL was an amazing partner to make sure that was communicated, to say, ‘This is an initiative that we need you to be a part of to take it to the next level,’ and teams really leaned in and had an open mindset to really get maybe places they felt uncomfortable.
“I think ultimately that led us to a space creatively that there was some breakthrough there, some space that maybe they would never have explored if it wasn’t for the Hometown Remix platform like this to open up an opportunity. We landed on something creatively that is so inspiring and so out of the box.”
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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Fans will have visceral reactions and like some uniforms more than others. That’s part of the fun.
Each uniform has a description of the story behind it. We can only begin to touch on all the details in this story.
Some things hit you right away. The Ducks wear green, yellow and purple, with a “Flying V” on the sleeve from the movie “The Mighty Ducks.” A roulette wheel spins on the sleeves of the Golden Knights jerseys like it does at center ice at T-Mobile Arena this season. The jade is inspired by casino felt. The numbers are inspired by playing cards. The Boston Bruins sport brown with a collegiate look. Stormy the mascot struts across the front of the Carolina Hurricanes jersey. The northern lights flicker in the Winnipeg Jets logo, sleeves and numbers. The tonal filigree detailing on the Nashville Predators jersey looks like something a country music artist would wear on stage at a honkytonk.
