It is articles like this that make writing about hockey jerseys so much fun. That’s because early Sunday morning the Minnesota Wild revealed their new white road sweater ten hours ahead of schedule (intentional or not?). Their website Wild.com had an eight photo gallery of Zach Parise and Josh Harding wearing the new sweaters. The sweaters weren’t scheduled to be released until noon Eastern time on Sunday at the Minnesota State Fair.

PHOTO CREDIT - Wild.com

Toronto - September 1, 2013 - It is articles like this that make writing about hockey jerseys so much fun. That’s because early Sunday morning the Minnesota Wild revealed their new white road sweater ten hours ahead of schedule (intentional or not?). Their website Wild.com had an eight photo gallery of Zach Parise and Josh Harding wearing the new sweaters. The sweaters weren’t scheduled to be released until noon Eastern time on Sunday at the Minnesota State Fair.

The new sweaters feature the classic Wild green, and plenty of it! The secondary red is there in the collar trim, collar insert, and the player numbers. The rest is that beautiful green. Green stripes on the arms and hem, which are in the same pattern as the green alternate the team currently wears. There are also green shoulder yokes that have been squared off. The bear head logo is used as the primary crest. It also appears in its circular logo form on the shoulders. The collar laces are green too and stitched in a classic style.

The creative design team that works for the Wild should sit down with the 29 other NHL teams. It should be in a classroom setting and the Wild can lecture the other teams on how to create a proper hockey sweater. Hem stripes, arm stripes, great logo, and shoulder yokes are optional. It’s a time tested recipe that the Wild have used to perfection.

The team released a series of teaser photos leading up to the reveal. Many jersey aficionados could piece together the direction the Wild were going. Finally in the wee hours of Sunday morning, images of the complete uniform surfaced. Despite having a good idea as to what would be seen the Wild still managed to blow me away. It was the squared shoulder yokes that did it. This sweater looks like it could stick around for 50 years. It looks like it has already been around for 50 years.

The problem previously with the three Minnesota Wild sweaters was that they had three completely different fantastic looking uniforms. With the introduction of this sweater, it ties the entire set together. I believe this is also a step towards the team promoting the current green third jersey to full-time home jersey status.

I would give this sweater a perfect score, but I would have rather seen green numbers instead of red. That’s only a personal preference and I understand that red is their secondary colour and needs to be on the sweater somewhere.

My score: 9/10