New Canadian Duck Sweaters! What?

If you saw the title and came looking for sweaters made out of Ducks, you're in the wrong place. Try this. 

 

If you came to read about the new sweaters released this week by Hockey Canada and the Anaheim Ducks, then read on!

HOCKEY CANADA

To celebrate 100 years of Hockey Canada the organization released a red and a white sweater to be worn during the 2014-15 international hockey season.

 

Simple and classic striping. Nice.
Retro wordmark. Nice.
New 100th anniversary logo. Decent.
Giant black shoulder yokes. WTF?!?!?!

Not one person in any of the multiple design meetings stopped and asked, "why black?"? Would red not be 100% more logical? Red yokes and the white jersey and white yokes on the red jersey. No one thought this was a better idea than big black yokes? Perhaps this is why Bob Nicholson got out when he did. Just kidding, but I think if the yokes were red and white, and not black, these jerseys would be a big seller. Bigger than this black yoke version will be, if it will be. Black is perfectly fine as a trim on Team Canada sweaters, but a big blob of it on the shoulder is just atrocious.

Anyways, the major events this jersey will be used at are the World Junior Championship in Montreal and Toronto. As well as the World Championship in Minsk. And if the NHL gets its way, we may see this in some form at the rumoured 2015 World Cup of Hockey.

It pains me to give the hockey jersey of my home nation a lower score, but the yokes are just so prevalent and it's terribly obvious that they should have been white and red. The remainder of the sweater saves it from dipping below a score of six though.

Rating: 6/10

ANAHEIM DUCKS

On Friday, the Anaheim Ducks were expected to at least show us a new road sweater. This wasn't expected to be seen until the Draft commenced. Luckily for us jersey nerds, the Ducks started the party about 6 hours early. Not only did they show us the new road sweater, but they also shared their revamped home sweater!

 

The home sweater is the former alternate, but now the collar is the Stadium Series style collar with laces. The road sweater is a very literal white translation. Even the stripes are in the same orientation as the black jersey. The black yokes from the home jersey stayed as well!

I really like the changes to the collar, except for the Stadium Series style laces. (It looks dumb to me and always will). I prefer the white jersey over the black one and I think it's those black yokes. They really pull the sweater together nicely. Without them it may have been a very plain white uniform.

I usually like to stick to whole or half marks. On this occassion a 7.5 seems too low, but an 8 seems too high.

Rating: 7.8/10

What are your thoughts on these four sweaters?