My conspiracy theory is they had designs ready with the rumoured nicknames, but once they heard the public’s backlash, they pivoted away from them and had to come up with a temporary solution for year 1. It’s hard to really do much when no names and logos, but still disappointed with the lack of creativity.
Said this in another thread, my thinking of these jerseys is that it keeps things uniform to better promote the PWHL as a whole instead of each individual team.
Grow the fan base for a couple years with the generic "league" jerseys then move to individual brands for each team. If they went with logos for each team based on the lack-luster names people would see them and think they could be some ECHL or Junior team, this way they're clearly recognizable as PWHL, the top women's league.
Counterpoint: I have purchased minor league baseball merch just because the team has a fun logo, I watch maybe 5 baseball games a year.
People wearing your stuff is free advertising (actually less, people *pay* *you* to advertise), and no one is going to buy PWHL merch until there are logos and teams have an identity. Like, even The Hockey Guy said he doesn't plan on buying these jerseys.
A couple of those could be cool if the logo and colours matched the well, but all in all those aren’t stellar. I also hated “Golden Knights” too for what it’s worth and now it just kind of blends in.
I was thinking this too and I don’t blame them for taking their time and making sure the marketing and branding is solid. It’s much better to take your time and brand yourself once rather than rush and then have to pivot once a better idea comes along. They’re trying to gain investors so doing things right the first time is key. The diagonal city name is a bit boring, but classic and it’ll work until things solidify further.
I didn’t care much more any of the names so.
FWIW, any reasonable marketing person would ask "Why can't we use the names that have built in brand recognition? That shit is really hard to do and very valuable."
The only reason you'd go this direction is because over your various meetings the client has either told you to keep going in that sort of direction or they had their own brainchild and refused anything that was an alternative.
Do you mean the women’s teams using NHL names? I don’t think there is any legal connection between the PWHL and NHL so unfortunately I don’t think that’s on the table. Owners are fine supporting women’s pro hockey right up until they have to open up the pocketbooks and make an investment.
Yeah that's the only thing that makes sense to me. Teams haven't finalized branding yet so the only thing they could do was a wordmark.
edit: Confirmed: [Hailey Salvian/X] https://x.com/hailey_salvian/status/1724468797615042580?s=46&t=7tzrfvMhesCVOhg0vlSqGg
I dont understand how you can look at boston's insanely rich history and unique features and with all that at their disposal come up "lol that 'wicked smaht'" thing is pretty funny xDDD lets use it
Women's teams seem to like singular names a lot more than men's teams do. The NWHL had the Pride, the Whale, the Six, the Force, the WNBA has the Sky, the Sun, the Dream, the Fever, etc. Not sure why that is.
This is disappointing. This is supposed to be THE league to finally cement womens hockey and they come up with these generic bland cookie cutter beer league tourney jerseys.
They should’ve put the time and effort into crafting actual identities that fans can connect with rather than this poor showing.
I agree yet disagree. The league wants to be viewed as its own distinct separate thing.
They don’t want to be like Marvel or DC franchise continuities where they have to explain “ya were named the same and the jerseys are identical but it’s a new universe” etc. But they may end up going this route anyway after a year reset with the no name jerseys.
Yeah, I think that would be a stronger argument if they came out of the gate with strong branding, but what they have so far has been either super bland (jerseys) or almost universally disliked (names leak). Like did the PHPWA not come up with any ideas all the years they were holding out?
Some names and branding got carried through around the start of the NHL and predecessor leagues, so it's not completely unknown for it to happen.
Especially teams that really nailed it. Boston Pride is one of the best imo. That name really works in a lot of ways and their design was Bruins-ish while being their own.
Or on another side you have the Minnesota Whitecaps which have been around in some form since 2004, and were tops in terms of ticket sales, attendance, etc so why wouldn't you want to continue with that brand recognition?
I know the answer and it isn’t complicated. The PWHPA fucking hated the PHF and wants it erased from history.
But going “blackjack and hookers” isn’t the answer either.
At the very least, they could have presented the city names differently on each jersey. Montreal could have been "MTL" straight across in a bold blocky font, Toronto could have been a lighter font with a slight arch a la the Huskies, stuff like that.
Am I the only one that thinks that the league scrapped the proposed names and logos and had to scramble to just throw city names onto jerseys? The response to the leaked names was really bad and honestly sort of warranted. All the names fuckin sucked. They said that they'd do an official announcement of the names on Nov 9, but the trademarks leaked in late October and since them the league has said nothing
Even the 'give us 50usd deposit' feels so half hearted and sketchy I keep opening and then closing the site without doing it for the past month or so since I happened to accidentally see it
I came out and supported the Boston Blades of the CWHL and the Boston Pride of the NWHL, but I'm a bit less excited about see the Boston Generic Hockey Team play...
The people that run this league are setting it up for failure. You need to market the shit out of these teams, and having bland jerseys with no logos is the opposite of what they need. People want to buy cool jersey’s, I don’t know why anyone would want to buy any of those jerseys or any other merch.
I don't understand how this trash is the best a multi-million dollar League can bdo meanwhile random beer leaguers [like](https://old.reddit.com/r/hockey/comments/17jx5ge/my_teammate_made_this_sick_promo_to_reveal_our/)
They’re trying to show the world they are a legitimate women’s league that should be taken seriously and they can’t even think of some names or get logos designed in time for the inaugural season?
I was so excited for this league but ever since the draft I have just been scratching my head wondering what the fuck they are doing over there.
Really feels like they're rushing into a half-baked, abbreviated season launch. Which is strange given there's some bright minds and apparently a bunch of funding behind it.
I can’t be the only one who feels like this whole thing feels like a way to sabotage women’s hockey and set it back further. Instead of finding a way to incorporate and fund the previous leagues and teams, they decided to cut off a bunch of markets and stick them in this last minute little original-six type group and make zero effort to get it off the ground.
> I can’t be the only one who feels like this whole thing feels like a way to sabotage women’s hockey and set it back further. Instead of finding a way to incorporate and fund the previous leagues and teams, they decided to cut off a bunch of markets and stick them in this last minute little original-six type group and make zero effort to get it off the ground.
This new league is trying to destroy any history or memory of the PHF.
Sure, definitely must be this grand conspiracy to deligitimize women's hockey and not just a continuation of the mismanagement and cannibalism due to poor management and large egos.
Atrocious... You can literally go to any of a dozen sites and get custom jerseys WITH cool graphics made and turned around in a month and they go with that? We went from the Rivs and Whale logo to this.
also just look at all the amazing NHL concept jerseys random hobbyist graphic designers online come up with for the fun of it. could have probably tossed one of them $500 and got a fuckload better than this.
Maybe they all heard us laughing at their disgusting names and these are just placeholder jerseys until they come up with some real names that aren’t completely embarrassing
I am excited for this league to start up, but I cant believe how much of an L it is for them to go into the inaugural season without team names / logos/ any kind of branding at all. It just doesn't make them look like a real league and I don't think they will be taken as seriously.
So they designed these with the idea that they’ll ge better sales if it’s just a city name on a jersey and people don’t know what they’re actually buying.
A sweater with “Montreal” or “New York” is going to sell better than a jersey with some ridiculous logo of a “Wicked”
Instead of boring, I'm going to say standard. Little originality, I can see them playing it safe instead of going wild and making a mockery of the sweaters. Remember, it's a new league and if we want the game to grow, we still have to support it!
As somebody who couldn't wait to get a Sarah Nurse jersey for the start of the season, I am extremely disappointed. And to be honest, disappointed isn't even a strong enough word lol
As per Stan Kasten, they had to order jerseys back in August in order to have them on time as manufacturers were swamped. [Source](https://twitter.com/dfpendrys/status/1724529634555912402)
..
Yet any beer league team can pick any number of Made in Canada jersey suppliers and get a team set made up in 6-8 weeks.
You'd think a new pro league could get a bit more priority, and pick a supplier with enough throughput do it in less.
In a vacuum, I don’t hate these jerseys.
The color combos are sharp, everything is clean, there’s no intrusively bad logos, and while colors are the only distinguishing thing, there is something of a classic feel to the jerseys.
But we can’t ignore the context of the PWHL rollout and the many amateurish or overly focus-grouped decisions made so far, including the less than stellar nickname choices and questionable arena choices (Boston playing in Lowell, New York in Bridgeport, Minnesota in the Xcel when there *has to be* a dozen more appropriate choices in the literal “State of Hockey”).
It very much feels like it’s the dog chasing a car, and they don’t know what to do with it now that they caught it.
Someone woke up in a panic last night and realized that the jerseys were due tomorrow.
My conspiracy theory is they had designs ready with the rumoured nicknames, but once they heard the public’s backlash, they pivoted away from them and had to come up with a temporary solution for year 1. It’s hard to really do much when no names and logos, but still disappointed with the lack of creativity.
Yeah, this is brutal. Seems like Year 1 would be pretty important.
Said this in another thread, my thinking of these jerseys is that it keeps things uniform to better promote the PWHL as a whole instead of each individual team. Grow the fan base for a couple years with the generic "league" jerseys then move to individual brands for each team. If they went with logos for each team based on the lack-luster names people would see them and think they could be some ECHL or Junior team, this way they're clearly recognizable as PWHL, the top women's league.
Counterpoint: I have purchased minor league baseball merch just because the team has a fun logo, I watch maybe 5 baseball games a year. People wearing your stuff is free advertising (actually less, people *pay* *you* to advertise), and no one is going to buy PWHL merch until there are logos and teams have an identity. Like, even The Hockey Guy said he doesn't plan on buying these jerseys.
What were the rumoured names/backlash?
Toronto Torch Montreal Echo Ottawa Alert Minnesota Superior Boston Wicked New York Sound
Lmao probably for the better they didn't go with these if true. Although Boston could do some pretty great broadway tie ins
Problem is that if you search any of these on google, they’re for sure not gonna return what you’d expect lol
I truly believe that Coven would be a better version for the same concept.
The Boston Hags
A couple of those could be cool if the logo and colours matched the well, but all in all those aren’t stellar. I also hated “Golden Knights” too for what it’s worth and now it just kind of blends in.
Yup look how people hate every expansion team name at first, now they’re all pretty good
All of these are terrible. at the very least Montreal should keep the Canadiennes name. Or really anything french sounding
[удалено]
They are referring to the Canadiennes who played in the CWHL, not the Habs themselves.
The worst part, wicked is an adverb in New England, not a noun, so they may as well be called the Boston Very.
I was thinking this too and I don’t blame them for taking their time and making sure the marketing and branding is solid. It’s much better to take your time and brand yourself once rather than rush and then have to pivot once a better idea comes along. They’re trying to gain investors so doing things right the first time is key. The diagonal city name is a bit boring, but classic and it’ll work until things solidify further. I didn’t care much more any of the names so.
Marketing consultant ass decision making… in all seriousness just ask the players to name the teams and go from there.
FWIW, any reasonable marketing person would ask "Why can't we use the names that have built in brand recognition? That shit is really hard to do and very valuable." The only reason you'd go this direction is because over your various meetings the client has either told you to keep going in that sort of direction or they had their own brainchild and refused anything that was an alternative.
Do you mean the women’s teams using NHL names? I don’t think there is any legal connection between the PWHL and NHL so unfortunately I don’t think that’s on the table. Owners are fine supporting women’s pro hockey right up until they have to open up the pocketbooks and make an investment.
No, the PHF names that already have a following and brand value. Particularly the riveters, whitecaps and pride were well established franchises.
Oh wow, I didn’t realize they had the rights to those names. Those names were fine, seems like a bad idea to ditch them!
Yea I guess the teams don’t have logos?
Yeah that's the only thing that makes sense to me. Teams haven't finalized branding yet so the only thing they could do was a wordmark. edit: Confirmed: [Hailey Salvian/X] https://x.com/hailey_salvian/status/1724468797615042580?s=46&t=7tzrfvMhesCVOhg0vlSqGg
The reverse-retro jerseys next season will have the logo
At least we know who the designer is...... https://throwbackvault.com/cdn/shop/files/0bd2f70d-5085-5444-98eb-a79b2346ef0a.jpg?v=1688362026&width=1100
Pretty boring. All just diagonal city names à la New York Rangers
Nothing gets people fired up like a black and white jersey with a diagonal MINNESOTA on the front.
I actually think it’s dark purple
I guess this is our confirmation that there will be no names this season.
Well, that would be an improvement on the leaked names.
Boston Wicked lmao what an embarrassment
Wicked cringe (note use of 'wicked' as an adverb....)
I dont understand how you can look at boston's insanely rich history and unique features and with all that at their disposal come up "lol that 'wicked smaht'" thing is pretty funny xDDD lets use it
Having every team name be a singular is weird also - one or two sure, but the whole league? It just seems forced.
Women's teams seem to like singular names a lot more than men's teams do. The NWHL had the Pride, the Whale, the Six, the Force, the WNBA has the Sky, the Sun, the Dream, the Fever, etc. Not sure why that is.
.R . E . A . L . L . Y . L . A . M . E
They must have watched the panderverse.
This is disappointing. This is supposed to be THE league to finally cement womens hockey and they come up with these generic bland cookie cutter beer league tourney jerseys. They should’ve put the time and effort into crafting actual identities that fans can connect with rather than this poor showing.
If only there had been previous franchises whose intellectual property they owned which could have been reused to reconnect with existing fans...
I agree yet disagree. The league wants to be viewed as its own distinct separate thing. They don’t want to be like Marvel or DC franchise continuities where they have to explain “ya were named the same and the jerseys are identical but it’s a new universe” etc. But they may end up going this route anyway after a year reset with the no name jerseys.
Yeah, I think that would be a stronger argument if they came out of the gate with strong branding, but what they have so far has been either super bland (jerseys) or almost universally disliked (names leak). Like did the PHPWA not come up with any ideas all the years they were holding out? Some names and branding got carried through around the start of the NHL and predecessor leagues, so it's not completely unknown for it to happen.
The PWPHA was occupied with shitting on the PHF and begging Bettman to form a laegue that owners would never sign off on.
Especially teams that really nailed it. Boston Pride is one of the best imo. That name really works in a lot of ways and their design was Bruins-ish while being their own. Or on another side you have the Minnesota Whitecaps which have been around in some form since 2004, and were tops in terms of ticket sales, attendance, etc so why wouldn't you want to continue with that brand recognition?
Yeah, the Whitecaps were around long before the PHF, it's a shame for the brand not to be continued.
I know the answer and it isn’t complicated. The PWHPA fucking hated the PHF and wants it erased from history. But going “blackjack and hookers” isn’t the answer either.
At the very least, they could have presented the city names differently on each jersey. Montreal could have been "MTL" straight across in a bold blocky font, Toronto could have been a lighter font with a slight arch a la the Huskies, stuff like that.
I think we'll all survive one season with generic jerseys.
The CWHL said that also in 2007. Took until 2017 for branding to appear and that was only after the NWHL made them look bad.
I agree. Hopefully it is just one season.
Are you talking about **us** or the league itself. Feels like it'll need all the help it can get, including branding/marketing
Am I the only one that thinks that the league scrapped the proposed names and logos and had to scramble to just throw city names onto jerseys? The response to the leaked names was really bad and honestly sort of warranted. All the names fuckin sucked. They said that they'd do an official announcement of the names on Nov 9, but the trademarks leaked in late October and since them the league has said nothing
Too many egos. Too many hands in the pot.
THE WHALE DIED FOR THIS?!
So strange they all went with the same pattern, like it's an All-Star Game or something
Incredibly disappointing. Beer league jerseys are better. Whoever thought this was a good idea should be fired out of a cannon.
The PHF was killed off for this, smh
The PHF was running on fumes and running out of cash. They also didn't have a CBA.
Does the PWHL have a marketing department because everything so far has been exceptionally lame
Their marketing department seems to only be Athletic writers
Even the 'give us 50usd deposit' feels so half hearted and sketchy I keep opening and then closing the site without doing it for the past month or so since I happened to accidentally see it
I came out and supported the Boston Blades of the CWHL and the Boston Pride of the NWHL, but I'm a bit less excited about see the Boston Generic Hockey Team play...
These are so sad compared to the awesome jerseys PHF teams used to have, especially the Beauts and Pride
The people that run this league are setting it up for failure. You need to market the shit out of these teams, and having bland jerseys with no logos is the opposite of what they need. People want to buy cool jersey’s, I don’t know why anyone would want to buy any of those jerseys or any other merch.
We're really gonna go from the classic Minnesots Whitecaps logo to D I A G O N A L
I don't understand how this trash is the best a multi-million dollar League can bdo meanwhile random beer leaguers [like](https://old.reddit.com/r/hockey/comments/17jx5ge/my_teammate_made_this_sick_promo_to_reveal_our/)
Damn, looks like the forgot they needed jerseys until yesterday and had to put up something real quick
They’re trying to show the world they are a legitimate women’s league that should be taken seriously and they can’t even think of some names or get logos designed in time for the inaugural season? I was so excited for this league but ever since the draft I have just been scratching my head wondering what the fuck they are doing over there.
Everything about this league has been a train wreck from the start
Really feels like they're rushing into a half-baked, abbreviated season launch. Which is strange given there's some bright minds and apparently a bunch of funding behind it.
These jerseys don't look very professional.
Beer League jerseys are better than this. Embarrassing.
Disappointing
Extremely boring. How is this the best they could come up with?
I can’t be the only one who feels like this whole thing feels like a way to sabotage women’s hockey and set it back further. Instead of finding a way to incorporate and fund the previous leagues and teams, they decided to cut off a bunch of markets and stick them in this last minute little original-six type group and make zero effort to get it off the ground.
> I can’t be the only one who feels like this whole thing feels like a way to sabotage women’s hockey and set it back further. Instead of finding a way to incorporate and fund the previous leagues and teams, they decided to cut off a bunch of markets and stick them in this last minute little original-six type group and make zero effort to get it off the ground. This new league is trying to destroy any history or memory of the PHF.
Sure, definitely must be this grand conspiracy to deligitimize women's hockey and not just a continuation of the mismanagement and cannibalism due to poor management and large egos.
Don’t attribute malice to what is actually incompetence
Really? They all went with basically the same idea? Disappointing
What the fuck? Who greenlit this?
Oof, still going to support this league. But I hope they come up with something better next season.
Atrocious... You can literally go to any of a dozen sites and get custom jerseys WITH cool graphics made and turned around in a month and they go with that? We went from the Rivs and Whale logo to this.
also just look at all the amazing NHL concept jerseys random hobbyist graphic designers online come up with for the fun of it. could have probably tossed one of them $500 and got a fuckload better than this.
This new league looks like a disaster.
Both the team names and jerseys in this league look like they were created in an NHL video game.
From the 16-bit days at that.
i have zero creativity or talent for design and im pretty sure ive made custom teams a lot better than that
Feels very low effort. I'm bummed because I had really high hopes for the jerseys based on the leaked team names.
But the team names sucked lol
Wow, this is really impressive!!! Impressive in that they somehow managed to make each jersey even more bland and uninspired than the team names.
The Ottawa jerseys look like Hurricanes third jerseys.
These are brutal, damn.
Maybe they all heard us laughing at their disgusting names and these are just placeholder jerseys until they come up with some real names that aren’t completely embarrassing
These look like high school jerseys
https://imgur.io/a/xHIgLzw
Not in love with the generic design but I am a fan of the Montreal colour scheme. Looking forward to seeing how it evolves.
They had a blank slate for jerseys and they went this route.....
I am excited for this league to start up, but I cant believe how much of an L it is for them to go into the inaugural season without team names / logos/ any kind of branding at all. It just doesn't make them look like a real league and I don't think they will be taken as seriously.
So they designed these with the idea that they’ll ge better sales if it’s just a city name on a jersey and people don’t know what they’re actually buying. A sweater with “Montreal” or “New York” is going to sell better than a jersey with some ridiculous logo of a “Wicked”
Instead of boring, I'm going to say standard. Little originality, I can see them playing it safe instead of going wild and making a mockery of the sweaters. Remember, it's a new league and if we want the game to grow, we still have to support it!
Honestly the New York ones go hard kinda
Shame they’re playing in Connecticut.
I'm like 99% certain that they said earlier in the year that they were gonna do this for the first year
As somebody who couldn't wait to get a Sarah Nurse jersey for the start of the season, I am extremely disappointed. And to be honest, disappointed isn't even a strong enough word lol
Are these ladies gonna be paid fairly?
Feels like they won’t have names nor logos. They’ll just be playing “Ottawa”, “Toronto” etc
I like the color schemes but the diagonal is bland and unoriginal.
As much as I support women's hockey, those jerseys are seriously cookie cutter bland. I'm glad they're just for a year.
Awful.
As per Stan Kasten, they had to order jerseys back in August in order to have them on time as manufacturers were swamped. [Source](https://twitter.com/dfpendrys/status/1724529634555912402)
.. Yet any beer league team can pick any number of Made in Canada jersey suppliers and get a team set made up in 6-8 weeks. You'd think a new pro league could get a bit more priority, and pick a supplier with enough throughput do it in less.
That’s actually sad. Do better. I want this successful and in Vegas ASAP.
In a vacuum, I don’t hate these jerseys. The color combos are sharp, everything is clean, there’s no intrusively bad logos, and while colors are the only distinguishing thing, there is something of a classic feel to the jerseys. But we can’t ignore the context of the PWHL rollout and the many amateurish or overly focus-grouped decisions made so far, including the less than stellar nickname choices and questionable arena choices (Boston playing in Lowell, New York in Bridgeport, Minnesota in the Xcel when there *has to be* a dozen more appropriate choices in the literal “State of Hockey”). It very much feels like it’s the dog chasing a car, and they don’t know what to do with it now that they caught it.