2014 USA Olympic Jersey

I would like to start out this blog by taking a critical look at the brand new jerseys created by Nike for the U.S. Olympic ice hockey teams.

What we have here is a design that looks more appropriate for a soccer jersey or maybe a set of Under Armour. The new look to the U.S. jerseys has gotten a lot of backlash including this humorous article from SBNation. Within hours of the release, USA Hockey's Facebook page exploded with comments about how horrendous these jerseys look; there were so many comments that they started deleting the poor reviews and only kept the positive ones. It's pretty bad when even one of the players, St. Louis Blues captain David Backes, models the jersey for the media and states that he has reservations about it.

What is there to criticize about these jerseys? Well, we can start with the hokey and ridiculous looking star pattern at the top of the jersey. It literally looks like a child got some construction paper, cut out some stars and went to town. Most jerseys also feature laces at the top in order to keep the top portion nice and tight (it's stylish too!). But on these particular jerseys, Nike decided to use a fake pattern much like the stars in which there are "laces" placed near the top in a knot. This just looks silly. The contrast in the stripes between the white and dark jerseys is strange as well. On the dark jersey, the red and white stripes are large and there is no stripe across the front. The light jersey features a red stripe all the way across the jersey to separate the top blue half from the bottom white half. The truly one good thing about this jersey is the crest; the logo used for these two reflects USA jerseys of old. The inside of the collar features the phrase "Land of the Free, Home of the Brave" which would have been a nice touch on the shoulder where we could see it instead of being hidden in the collar.

My final thoughts: Shame on you Nike. You ruined what has always been a solid symbol of our Olympic pride with this second-rate tissue paper style jersey. Might I suggest scrapping this before the Games and going back to the 1980s 'Miracle on Ice' style or even the more recent ones?