The Good: 1993-2006
The Anaheim Mighty Ducks, hockey’s Mona Lisa. Without a doubt one of the greatest uniforms ever created. It’s an awe-striking combination of a great color scheme, an iconic logo, and an ingenious design. All 3 work in perfect harmony.
Perhaps my favorite aspect of the jersey is the way in which it was designed. The downward slanting stripes on the sleeves and torso are fresh and original. These tarps would blaze the trail for the rest of the NHL as many teams would later experiment with their traditional horizontal torso and arm bands. The 3 multicolored bands would play perfectly into the elite color scheme as they would accent the unique jade and highlight the primary color; whether it was the eggplant away or the home whites. The scheme relied very little on neutral colors. Even on the whites, there was a solid amount of both primary and secondary colors in the form of stripes, lettering, and numbering.
Tying it all together was the crest, a logo so popular you can ask any loser who doesn’t watch hockey its origin and they’ll respond immediately. It’s just too iconic not to know. This masterpiece is not only the best version of the Ducks, but quite possibly the best jersey the NHL has ever seen.
The Bad: 2014- Present
While this set isn’t the worst the franchise has produced, it’s not far off. I don’t hate the colors and the logo is at least somewhat interesting compared to others around the league, but the design is atrocious. The sleeves stripes are understandable, but the vertical stripes at the sides are a head-scratcher. They leave the front and back of the sweater plain and uninteresting.
Black is the primary color, which I wouldn’t hate so much if the orange and weird golden/brown secondaries weren’t suppressed into tiny slivers of vertical stripes doomed to the sides of the jersey. It leaves both home and away jerseys dominated by neutral colors. The colors are present, they’re just not being properly utilized. All things considered, the Ducks have plenty of potential in their color scheme and the logo, but they need to completely overhaul the design. Overall,
There's just not a whole lot to say about the Duck's uniforms in their current state. They went from hockey icons to easily forgettable. I just get a general feeling of ‘meh’ from this set.
The Ugly: 2006-2014
If I could figure out how to do it, i would go back in time to slap some sense into the Duck’s brass to prevent this travesty, I would. Honestly, I think anybody would, It’s a disaster. It’s difficult to understand why and how this garbage came into existence DIRECTLY after the golden age of the Mighty Ducks.
After some digging, i found out why Ducks ownership decided to re-brand. To break it down, in early 2006 the team was sold by Disney and the new Ducks ownership decided to drop the ‘mighty’ from the team name and completely overhaul the uniform. Apparently, they felt that they needed to present themselves in a more serious way, which I can understand as the team was originally owned by Disney. Not to mention their entire existence came from a Disney Movie. My problem with this is the belief that a uniform has that much power. During this time frame, the Mighty Ducks were scary good. I can assure you teams weren't laughing in their face as they were making their cup run in the early 2000s.
Also, I can make a very strong case that ‘mighty ducks’ are a much more serious matter than stupid regular ducks. If I'm taking a walk to the park and i see a man fearfully running my direction yelling about 'mighty duck', i may change my course of direction. If i ask him whats wrong and all he says is 'ducks' I may make a quick trip to the grocery store and come back with some loaves of Sara Lee and it’s a wrap. Back to the jerseys.
For starters, I can understand wanting to re-brand and aiming for a more serious tone. But what i can't understand is why the new uniform had to be so damn boring.
Any human who puts this jersey on will have its lack of character brush off on them and automatically lose 20 personality points. The logo is just the team name written out in text. Way to represent yourself there, Anaheim.
The NHL has a weird obsession with text as the logo, I’ve never understood it, but it’s a big no-no, especially if you’re trying to sell a re-brand. So then let’s move on to the color scheme.
The new Ducks owners wanted to change the color scheme to represent their location in Orange County. I can get behind that idea. So why did they only add 4 wimpy orange stripes to the entire uniform? Not entirely sure. That’s some seriously subtle Orange County pride. I can’t really talk about the rest of the color scheme because that’s about it; a dab of orange, big splashes of neutral colors, and some weird browny-gold. I will say I do appreciate the somewhat similar design we saw on the Mighty Duck uniforms, but It feels drab and undefined because of the lack of color and the oddly curved stripes.
Overall, these are hideous much better suited for keeping people out of your swamp.
When the re-branding came in 2007, the ugly ducklings would go on to win the Stanley Cup, so I guess there’s some magic behind this mess. But it makes you wonder how much prettier the cup photo would have looked like if they would have just left things alone.
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