Next season, the NHL is doing another league-wide alternate jersey release, similar to the “Reverse Retro” jerseys in 2020 and 2022. This time, it’s being called the “Hometown Remix.” It appears to be the NHL’s answer to the City jerseys in the NBA and MLB.
Two jerseys have been leaked so far. The Florida Panthers are sporting a pink jersey with an altered version of their alternate logo on the crest, and the New York Islanders releasing a white Fisherman jersey.
While the Edmonton Oilers jersey hasn’t been leaked just yet, it is rumoured that the base colour will be black and shares elements with the team’s third jersey from 2019.
Sure, it is still speculative at this point (what does “share elements” even mean, really?). It could end up looking quite good and becoming a fan favourite like this past year’s cream alternate (which no one ever said anything bad about ever). However, if this jersey ends up being essentially a redux of that with black instead of navy blue, it will be a pretty big disappointment.
Given what some teams are doing/rumoured to be doing, like the Panthers with the pink and the Anaheim Ducks potentially doing an homage to the original Mighty Ducks movie, it would have been cool if the team had thought outside the box a bit more.
If I had been in the room, here are some ideas that I would have pitched.
Green and Gold
The reason the Oilers are orange and blue is because of a potential sponsorship deal with Gulf Oil that ended up falling through.
However, one can certainly argue that the colours for a new team in Edmonton should have been green and gold. Both the University of Alberta and the Edmonton Elks wear those colours; even the old AAA Trappers had a logo in those colours.
With the whole “hometown” theme here, it would seem fitting to go with a green and gold colour scheme. This is similar to what the Panthers are doing with the pink.
This idea wouldn’t take much work either. You could literally just swap the orange and blue on the current jerseys with the green and gold, no need to go any further. I am willing to bet there would be pretty unanimous praise.
Granted, between the Elks and the Golden Bears/Pandas, the Oilers actually have some designs they can lift from as well and just put the Oilers logo on instead:
Heck, if you really wanted to keep the black as the base, the Pandas have you covered still:
Copper and Blue
Another option would be to finally throw some recognition for the team’s copper and blue era. The team sported this from 1996 to 2012. That’s a pretty long time, and those colours are still associated with the team. The team even went to the Stanley Cup Final in them, so I think it is fair to say that there are enough people who miss those jerseys.
You would need to do something more than just bring back those old jerseys, unlike just swapping the colours like you could with the green and gold. But that’s something you’d need to do in any event, so that should not be that big of an obstacle.
New or different logo
The Oilers have sported a jersey with a different logo just three times: the gear drop on the first third jersey in 2001 (and then a slightly modified version for the second reverse retro in 2022), then the most recent heritage classic jerseys against Calgary in 2023, and finally last year’s alternate with the Oilers watermark.
Keeping with the copper and blue era, one logo that I think would look pretty sweet on the front would be the Oil Rigger shoulder patch:
If you don’t want to re-hash an old logo, though, how about creating a whole new one?
In particular, what if you made the logo just an oil drop? We’ve seen that it can be a pretty cool-looking logo already, with both OEG and the Loilty logos using a version:
If you want to go with the black base, then maybe a simple but stylized orange oil drop on the chest could actually be the thing to save it.
Orange-based jersey
The Oilers tried to do a slight re-brand when Connor McDavid was drafted. They used the orange third jersey as his draft one.
The Oilers had this as an alternate until 2017, when they fully adopted orange as the base colour.
Unfortunately, the switch in the shade of the orange kinda ruined things, so much so that the team went with the alternate navy jersey as their home jersey in the 2022 playoffs.
But the original orange jersey is still a fan favourite. If you went with that shade, I think it would be a hit. Instead of black, why not take that navy jersey, use the burnt orange as the base and then use navy blue for the logo and the stripes? That would look pretty good, in my opinion.
It remains to be seen what the Oilers jersey does end up looking like, and we all know that there will be some who love it and some who hate it. Regardless of the ratio, it will still somehow end up being one of the best-selling jerseys in the league.
Give us your thoughts in the comments on what you think the jersey should look like.
Photo by Curtis Comeau/Icon Sportswire
