Formerly standard practice across the league for decades, the era of white jerseys at home in the NHL feels long gone – but nostalgia isn’t the only reason it should be revisited.
There’s no question that regardless of sport, the appearance of a team’s uniform is certain to be a source of pride, bearing a logo and colors that its home city is proud to represent year-round.
Despite the long list of inevitable differences in uniform design between the four major North American professional sports leagues, one constant remains – every team has a white jersey.
More than any other color on the spectrum, white on sports uniforms is assigned with a purpose. This is most commonly and traditionally seen with white uniforms (or at least white pants) being the standard for home teams in Major League Baseball for the length of the league’s existence.
White jerseys were also traditionally worn by home teams in the NBA, though the nightly jersey choice has been at the teams’ discretion since the 2017-18 season, when Nike took over as the league’s uniform partner. The inverse is typically true in the NFL as away teams usually wear white, though this comes with notable exceptions.
As for the NHL, color jerseys at home have been nearly universal since the 2003-04 season, with the lone exceptions typically coming when a home team opts to wear a primarily white alternate jersey. This change followed a period of over three decades when home teams wore white uniforms at home and color jerseys on the road, which lasted from the 1970-71 season through the 2002-03 season.
With it already being over 20 years since white jerseys were routinely worn at home in the NHL, there’s growing nostalgia for an era that was associated with the sport’s biggest stars and offensive production of all-time.
Beyond just surface-level nostalgia, there’s a bit more to sink your teeth into – particularly when it comes to playoff games. Some teams, most notably the Winnipeg Jets, have maintained tradition by holding “whiteout” games in the postseason, providing a jarring site when both the home team’s fans and away team’s players are both donning white.
The Pittsburgh Penguins have also held whiteout playoff games during the era of home teams wearing color jerseys, though a shift away from the Vegas Gold to a shade of gold more associated with Pittsburgh ahead of the 2016-17 season put an end to that era.
As it wouldn’t even require a shift at all in the league’s current uniform configuration, it feels like the least that could happen would be for the NHL to allow the Jets to wear their white uniforms during home playoff games.
Yet even if my ultimately pointless nostalgia for white uniforms at home falls on deaf ears, a logical step for the league to take that would likely be popular among most fans would be to echo the NBA’s approach to uniforms.
While the yearly rotating batch of City Edition uniforms have been wildly inconsistent, with plenty of iterations being unpopular with fans, the freedom to wear whatever jersey a team wants on any given night gives an element of anticipation and surprise to fans watching games both in-person and on the air.
Though it’s still bizarre as a Celtics fan to see the green jerseys worn at home, it isn’t on the level of sacreligious that a white MLB jersey on the road would be – and after nearly a decade of teams deciding nightly uniforms in the NBA, it’s something that I’ve gotten used to as a fan.
A configuration such as the NBA’s also allows teams that are perhaps more tradition-minded to adhere to what they’ve always been doing – most notably seen with the Los Angeles Lakers and Chicago Bulls. You’ll seldom see a traditional Lakers’ purple jersey or Bulls’ red jersey at home, while teams that switch things up a bit more are able to showcase a wide range of colors.
This switch-up would also feel like a breath of fresh air for the NHL due to the relatively low amount of third jerseys throughout the league. While NBA teams routinely boast four-to-five different uniforms that are regularly worn each year, 11 of the NHL’s 32 teams don’t even have a third jersey as of the 2025-26 season.
Though uniform travel is perhaps a bit more complicated than it is in the MLB and NBA, it’s not as if players would be packing two separate sets of pads to play in two different uniforms. With alternate jerseys themselves only being 30 years old in the NHL, giving teams more than one alternate could perhaps be an easy way to transition into a more fluid uniform configuration.
The best-case scenario, at least to this sports fan, would be a happy medium between what the NHL’s current set-up is and what the NBA offers as well. While I certainly would be just fine with a full-time return to white jerseys at home, giving fans a chance to see each visiting team’s colors when attending games, it feels like a set-up similar to the NBA’s is more likely.
While NHL teams having five or more different uniforms sounds and feels crazy and unnecessary, each team having at least three uniforms with some teams having four could help mix up how each game looks and feels – and it’s not as if teams would even have to get that creative for it either.
With retro-inspired designs being all the rage across all of professional sports, some NHL teams have already taken notice in that regard. The Buffalo Sabres, Vancouver Canucks, Winnipeg Jets and Calgary Flames are among the teams sporting a third jersey inspired by the teams’ past uniform designs, all of which remain popular among their fanbases.
Though the Utah Mammoth may need to dig deep for an alternate jersey design, fellow newcomer franchises in the Vegas Golden Knights and Seattle Kraken are both sporting third jerseys this season.
With just a few small changes, it’s easy to see how uniform choice can go from being an expectation to an exciting part of getting to see a game – particularly live in-person. Teams can opt for white at home, color on the road for classic matchups that bring nostalgia for a past era of NHL hockey, while fans can get the chance to see retro and modern-inspired jerseys alike in the same game.
Though truly an insignificant characteristic of the league when it comes to business, it’s hard to see how the promise of increased merchandise sales and more options for fans would be a bad thing for the league to pursue.
Whether it’s a reversion to the uniform configuration of the past or the league charting its own path similar to the NBA, it’s about time for some excitement and change to the league’s jerseys.
Leave a Reply