The NHL’s New Uniforms Have a Problem
The NHL just can’t catch a break. The league spent years working with Reebok to design new uniforms that are lighter, tighter, sleeker, cooler and faster. The result was a special water repellent jersey that retains 76% less moisture than the old sweaters. While the new jerseys are working well, that’s not necessarily good thing for Mark Recchi and some of his Penguin teammates.
“[The sweaters] don’t soak anything in, which I guess is what they wanted,” Recchi said. “But the problem is, it goes through all of your equipment. It goes into your gloves, goes into your skates.”
And eventually saturates the leather in both, leaving the players feeling as if their hands and feet are immersed in liquid. Perhaps because, at least in some cases, they are.
“They do what they were designed to do, as far as repelling the water,” defenseman Mark Eaton said. “But we’ve found, the last three or four days of wearing them, that, when the water’s repelled, it has nowhere to go but into your skates and gloves.
“By the end of the second [period] or the start of the third, your skates are sloshing around and you have to change your gloves because they’re [soaked].”
That doesn’t sound too comfortable.
There are a lot of players who have had only positive things to say about the jerseys, and Gary Bettman will just have to hope the players who haven’t will learn to love the new uniforms. At the very least the new jerseys should be a boon for the antifungal medication industry.
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