An Article from the New York Times, published April 23, 2000
By Mark Lasswell
Hope you enjoy...if nothing else, it's a little bit of funny stuff to lighten the offseason. Perhaps it will even be able to spark some debate on a forum.
Feel free to e-mail me your comments.
Josie3019@hotmail.com
The National Hockey League playoffs are in full swing, and for the third year in a row, the New York Rangers aren't skating. That's O.K. The Rangers have already won an important distinction : most jerseys.
That would be four : one blue and one white, each with R-A-N-G-E-R-S stepping diagonally down the front, and two alternatives, white and dark blue, each featuring the face of the Statue of Liberty. the Liberty jerseys were intriduced during the Ranger's wretched slide following their Stanley Cup victory in 1994, when the team appeared to be concentrating more on sales of licensed merchandise than on aquiring high-scoring players.
I know something about obsessing over hockey apparel when a team's on-ice efforts are just to ugly to contemplate. The adult-league team I play on is so bad I recently found myself deceiving my 5-year-old son.
When he earnestly asked, the morning after another middle-of-the-night loss, how the game had gone, I told him we had won, 4 to 2. But my team is past caring about losing. Like the Rangers, we have decided that if you can't beat 'em, get new jerseys.
Now, outfitting a hockey team with new uniforms might sound simple. Pick a color. Order 15. Put them on. That formula doesn't take into account one of the sport's great mysteries. For all their testosteronic slamming on the ice, hockey players can be as finicky about appearances are Oprah Winfrey making last minute changes to O, her new magazine.
I used to think that the most nonmacho thing about hockey was the time after a game when thebguys clomp into the locker room and start ripping off their gear - until that tender moment when they have to undo the garter belt holding up their hockey socks. It feels like closing time after a hard night at a bordello.
But then came the great jersey debate. It began when our team started hating teal. There was a time when teal was the sports world's color sine qua non.
Six years ago, I had just joined the team as it moved from the old Sky Rink on West 33rd Street to the Chelsea Piers. In the ratty Sky Rink, we wore kelly green practice jerseys, drab synthetic pullovers with a number silk-screened on the back.
In the gleaming new Sky Rink at Chelsea Piers, we unveiled our new shirts : the gaudy Pacific teal of the NHL's San Jose Sharks, roomier and cut from a better class of synthetic, with sewn-on numbers. Our logo was San jose's hockey-stick-chomping shark, flanked by two beer steins, in homage to our sponsor, the Molly Wee Pub and Restaurant. the beers were drawn freehand, possibly by someone wearing hockey gloves.
I doubted the jersey from the beginning. Departing from the primary colors sounded like asking for trouble. To play any sport is to open yourself up to humiliation. why invite it into your wardrobe? The staid NHL was startled when teal-clad San Jose entered the league in 1991. Yet, sales of the team's licensed merchandis soared, and lots of amateur squads started wearing teal, even though the Sharks played like jellyfish. but by 1994, when we jumped on the bandwagon, fabulous teal was teetering on overness.
I kept my concern to myself, at least for a while. That first season in teal we made the playoffs, but gradually, our fortunes soured. Our sponsor dumped us and who could blame them? The team used to reflexively stop by the Molly Wee Pub on Eighth Avenue between 29th and 30th Streets after our games because the old Sky Rink was practically next door. But after the move downtown, players quit coming in. We also started losing with frightening consistency. And that's when the jersey gripes began.
At first, it was just good-natured whining. Adopting the Sharks' look had been the inspiration of our team captain, Charlie. So before our games we knew we were sure to lose, or after games we had lost, we would grouse, "Charlie, these jerseys stink."
Occasionally, a locker-room debate would flare over whether the offending shade was teal at all. Someone would say "These are too blue, and teal is green." Another would argue, "No, Pacific teal is kind of blue-green."
Last year was a turning point for our uniforms. Molly Wee (we kept the name because we were stuck with the logo) has been blessed for the past couple of years by the presence of a goalie, Seasn, whose brilliance in net regularly turns games that could have been 15-1 blowouts into 6-1 mini-blowouts. For all the breakaways and uncontested slap shots that he has endured, he never complained. Except once. After another numbing loss, Sean plopped down on a locker-room bench and said, "I don't mind losing, but I sure do get sick of watching you guys skating around in those god-awful jerseys."
That did it. Even Charlie realized the time had come for a change. But to what? Having played in expensive NHL-style jerseys (75 bucks apiece!), no one wanted to go back to cheap practice jerseys. Teal or not, the rink had designated us the "green" team, so we had to stick with shades of that family.
We debated the merits of different NHL jerseys as if we were discussing color swatches. In the locker room, you'd hear, "Minnesota's getting a new team next year. Maybe the Wild will wear green like the North Stars used to." My son, who closely follows my team's fortunes, despite my disinformation campaign, suggested "a shirt with an eagle on it that has a green nose."
One of our players, Rob, works in professional sports, unfortunately not as a left wing with a deadly slap shot, but as a lawyer. When he said he might be able to buy our jerseys at a discount, Charlie became fixated. Could he order black shadows around the numbers? What about tackle twill? The lettering on nicer jerseys is made from a shiny cloth called tackle twill. Rob said he'd find out.
As a team, we were no more capable of agreeing on a jersey than deciding which player ought to be the shoter on a 3-on-1 break. So Charlie declared that our new jersey would be the one worn by the Phoenix Coyotes for away games. Except the Phoenix road jersey doesn't happen to be green. It's black, with some green detailing, as Rob pointed out. "No, it's green," Charlie insisted. Black, green; green, black. The back-and-forthing went on for weeks. We went online to study photos of the Coyotes. When Charlie saw the Phoenix jersey on a player at the rink one night, he finally concede that those jerseys were pretty darned black. Maybe the green shoulder patches would satisfy the league organizers? they did, and that's what we're going to order.
Basic black is usually a safe fashion haven, but I'm having some misgivings. Countless pro and amateur sports teams have adopted black in recent years : the Washington Capitals, the Calgary Flames, the Tampa Bay Lightning. One of the Rangers' jerseys is so dark blue that it looks black. Is black the new teal?
I called ProJoy Sportswear, a hockey-jersey maker in Guelph, Ontario. Dave Laughlin, the company's international sales representative, confirmed that black is THE color in hockey. "The craze is sort of fading a little bit," he added, chillingly.
What if a team of such startling charisma emerges from this year's Stanley Cup finals that it ignites a new hockey-jersey fad to replace black? Well, you can be sure that the Molly Wee Pub team - oops, we're the Manhattan Thunderbirds as soon as the new jerseys arrive - will change it's uniform yet again, probably by the time my son's old enough to play adult hockey.
If you're now as sick of teal as this poor guy and his team got, head on home by clicking here.
