Almost two months ago, at the start of September, I published a series of four articles showing off my predictions for the NHL and Adidas’ Reverse Retro reboot. Now that all 32 jerseys have been unveiled, I figured it’d be fun to look back and see which teams I hit the nail on the head, and which teams I missed completely.
We’re going to keep things mostly pretty brief, due to the fact that A) there’s 32 teams, and B) like any good college student, I’m writing this morning of. Let’s get into it!
Disqualified due to academic dishonesty
Aka, there were leaks for these teams before I made my predictions, so Chicago, Vancouver, and Vegas don’t count.
Now onto the actual grades!
A+’s – Practically perfect
Winnipeg is the only team I’d say I got a perfect score for; I only flipped the colors of the collar, everything else is bang-on.
You could argue Calgary could also get a perfect grade, just missing the red outline on the logo, but I may know someone who’s a photographer with the Flames who was able to confirm whether or not I was right. Or I may not.
Like all the other A+’s, Minnesota is also extremely close. Instead of missing the collar colors or the logo outline, I missed both!
Even though we knew a lot about this jersey prior to my predictions, Edmonton didn’t fully leak until after. So while you can make the argument that it should be in the “academic dishonesty” section, I’m counting it. Just missed on the logo colors and shoulder patches.
The worst of the best. I flipped around the black and bronze stripes for the Ducks, but considering we only had random speculation, I’ll take it!
A’s – Still pretty much correct
Being a CBJ fan, I made two predictions here. The hail Mary for a Chill throwback gets an F, but the “actual” prediction is pretty good! I was one of the few concept creators to get the color of the yoke right, thanks to PD’s expert eye, but I missed on the piping coloration.
Buffalo I did really well with, but I didn’t see the simplification coming, docking me points on the logo and the arm fill.
The hem and cuff colors were the main miss here; I was thinking they’d use the same template as the 2020 version, not switch the the briefly-used home version. Also, Adidas brought back the “Capitals” text, which is quite disappointing.
The Sharks threw us a curveball by only reversing the hem stripes, which I admittedly did not see coming. Not sure why they thought to do it that way, but they did.
I arguably shouldn’t get an A for Tampa, getting both the yoke and sleeve colors wrong, but goshdarnit it took a while to vectorize this hem pattern, so I’m curving the grade.
B’s – Some significant errors
Like the Jackets, the Rangers also went the 2000s-alternate-but-introduce-a-lighter-blue route. I kept everything but the base color from those alternates, while the Rangers decided to promote red this time around.
Dallas’s T-shirt leak had their old shoulder patch as the main feature, so that’s what I went with on my concept. Cheeky bastards.
Florida threw us a beautiful curveball with their design, bringing powder blue back to the league. I was worried that would clash with the yellow, hence why I flipped the stripes and yoke.
I correctly predicted orange as the main color, a vast reduction of teal, and a simplification of striping. I did not correctly predict the potency of those changes.
I was really hoping Boston would use more yellow in their actual jerseys. I was disappointed.
Okay, LA is admittingly a bit of a stretch to put as a B. I got the whole “white jersey with purple as the secondary color” part right. Just missed the era. Let’s call it a B-, shall we?
I thought Pittsburgh would flip the white and yellow, for no other reason than being interesting. Instead, they added their third black and yellow jersey to their collection.
C’s – Got the general vibe of the thing
I mean, I got the Scouts theme right. Just not much else.
The rumor was “white Rockies throwback.” What Colorado unveiled barely qualifies as such. It’s white, a throwback, and almost uses the Rockies colors.
Nashville pushed the limits of Reverse Retro by “reversing” the weird mustard color of the original to a pure yellow. I did a more traditional reversing.
Congrats, I correctly picked the one jersey template that Arizona has used this logo on!
No one really knew what to expect when the Expos Reverse Retro rumor first started flying, but we should have expected this. This is still the most innovative design choice Montreal has made since 1941, so looking for a full fauxback was a bit much.
I went high risk, high reward on Toronto. If I had been correct on using a green base, I’d have been heralded as a genius. If I was wrong, I’d look like a fool. I am a fool.
D’s – If you squint real hard…
I spent FIVE HOURS vectorizing that logo. And I got SQUAT for it.
I was correct on “red Cougars throwback.” I was wrong on colors, template, and quality.
I was correct on “super old but not Metropolitans,” yet I vastly underestimated the stripiness of this jersey.
I mean… they’re both black?
I mean… they both heavily feature black?
F – Just plain wrong
Uh… these jerseys are… uh… similar in that… um… they’re both Blues jerseys?
So, that’s a Reverse Retro reboot predictions revisit. If you want to know my actual thoughts on the jerseys themselves, I wrote about them earlier this week. Or, to read the original predictions posts, here’s a link to the Metropolitan Division predictions; you can get to the rest from there.
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