As you likely remember, the San Jose Sharks released their new home and road sweaters last Tuesday to mostly disappointing reviews. That included the review from yours truly. At HockeyJerseyConcepts.com artists send their hockey jersey designs in to me. When the Sharks’ uniforms were released, different ideas soon were sent to me by those artists.

PHOTO CREDIT - Ryan Haslett, HockeyJerseyConcepts.com

Toronto - August 26, 2013 - As you likely remember, the San Jose Sharks released their new home and road sweaters last Tuesday to mostly disappointing reviews. That included the review from yours truly. At HockeyJerseyConcepts.com artists send their hockey jersey designs in to me. When the Sharks’ uniforms were released, different ideas soon were sent to me by those artists.

(Image to right) I created this concept with some simple tweaks to the design that the Sharks are now using. They had substantially reduced the amount of orange used on their previous jerseys at the request of most of their fans. I suggest that they go all the way and remove it entirely (logo excluded) from the jersey. I also added matching hem stripes, of which none will be used on the new San Jose sweaters. That was the biggest complaint gathered from feedback. I have made some small changes which include removing the player number on the chest of the jersey and making the collar black on the home teal jersey.

Dylan decided to take the Sharks back to the drawing board after seeing the new sweaters. This concept here is intended as a new alternate sweater. It’s based loosely on the team’s early 2000’s uniform which did not include any orange and instead featured more silver. Dylan also did not include the numbers on the chest (a theme in these Sharks concepts), nor did he include laces on the collar merely because it’s trendy right now to do so. This concept would be a completely unique design for the Sharks that addresses many of the issues found on the new uniforms.

What Brian has done is take the Sharks’ new striping pattern, but he has applied it at an angle on the arms. That was a design feature used by the team in its early 2000’s alternate sweater. Just like the two previous concepts, Brian has used hem stripes…because they work!!! Take notes San Jose. He has also chosen not to include the numbers on the chest. One slightly major change that Brian made was to use a logo on the shoulders which is not often used by the Sharks despite its terrific design.

These are designs from hockey fans and hockey jersey fans. Sometimes the procedure of creating a new uniform can be kept so exclusive by a team that many major design elements end up poorly executed or passed over. Most of the time, accepting some fan feedback can help the process evolve in a good way. After all, it’s the fans that need to like the jersey, which leads to them purchasing it, which then leads to new revenue for the team. That is the ultimate driving force behind teams creating new uniforms, now matter how unfortunate that may be.