Ranking Every New NHL Jersey for the 2025-26 Season

A new NHL season means a lot of things, but the thing that hits us most is the introduction of new jerseys.

Let's keep it real here, nothing gets us talking more than brand-new duds, how they look, the way they make us feel and roasting them mercilessly if they're really bad.

There are a few teams this season that are changing their home and road sets, a few others introducing new alternate jerseys, a couple others who are turning back the clock because nothing pumps us up more than nostalgia and two teams are celebrating 100 years of existence. We're going to break down all the new jerseys and rank them.

To make it easier, we're grouping the new home and away sets together, but everything else will receive equal attention. Enough of the technicalities, let's get to ranking the new sweaters.

The problem with having a perfect home and road set of jerseys is that when you want to do an alternate, the bar is set somewhere beyond the stratosphere to get over. This is the issue the Oilers have, and the faux throwback alternate they've introduced falls well below that bar.

The cream-colored jersey is nice to differentiate and the script "Oilers" in blue with orange accent lines with the old-timey stripes through the shoulders is helping age the look. But this jersey is just old-looking for old sake and not having the Oilers' fantastic logo anywhere to be seen is just wrong.

We're sure they'll sell a bunch of these jerseys because there's a certain level of uniqueness to them, especially in comparison to their main shirts.

If you're buying a new Edmonton jersey, though, aren't you just getting a new blue or white one with a different favorite player's name and number on it instead?

One of the best pieces of uniform news this season comes out of Carolina, where the Hurricanes have ditched the wordmark style on their white road jerseys.

Gone is the "Canes" written diagonally downward across the front in red, and we're all thankful for that.

To replace it, Carolina essentially adopted their home black Stadium Series jersey and turned it white. Trading the wordmark for the spookier red and black version of their primary circular storm logo is an upgrade.

It's a markedly better look and using the North Carolina flag on one shoulder and the throwback-like "Stormy" mascot logo on the other shoulder is a nice touch and fun, silly look we enjoy.

The problem here is that it's the road jersey and those tend to be rather inherently "meh" by nature. This one has a bit more going on with it and that's good, but we probably need more time with it to see if we really like it or dislike it.

Often, when teams bring back a jersey, they do it for a more recent style that fans have made a point to let them know they miss.

For the New York Rangers' 100th season, however, they're taking it all the way back to the team's first season, 1926-1927, with a jersey that replicates the look and colors of the inaugural Rangers team.

Without that bit of knowledge, you might mistake this jersey for one trying too hard to look old-fashioned and get caught thinking it's corny or something similar. Instead, we're handing out massive respect points for going all the way back like this to honor the organization's history.

The lighter shade of blue is jarring compared to the royal blue we're used to seeing from the Rangers. The white letters and the absence of a drop shadow are equally stunning, and the way the shirt is designed to resemble a wool sweater physically is, honestly, amazing.

This is a great jersey to commemorate the centennial, but it suffers greatly because the Rangers, not too long ago, had a navy-blue heritage jersey that was vastly superior to any alternate jersey they've had in their team history.

We really want to like the Senators' new alternate jerseys, but there's something holding us back from going all-in.

Going with a red jersey makes sense, as does continuing to use the primary logo on the front. A red shirt to go with their home black and road white jerseys just makes sense, but there's something about the shoulder yoke that doesn't sit great with us.

The black with gold accents on the yoke gives it a mildly military style (fine), but this is where the red jersey doesn't quite work with it. It looks fine and it's a good shirt, but it's also kind of easy to pick on and roast just the same.

You could say it's less like what a general would wear and more like what a classy hotel bellhop would wear, if you wanted to be mean.

We like them, but we want to love them and we can't quite get there.

The Minnesota Wild are celebrating their 25th anniversary this season, and they're doing that by bringing back their inaugural white home jerseys.

What a great idea that was.

The original Wild jerseys were uniquely designed and unlike those of any other team in the NHL at the time. Add that to their fascinating main logo on the crest, and then the natural color scheme of green, gold, red, and white, and... yeah, it just works.

Bringing back that original look, with the same jagged, saw-blade-like number font and the original shoulder logo, makes us realize we're now experiencing nostalgia for things that came out in the year 2000.

We'll comfort ourselves with thoughts of Kirill Kaprizov and Matt Boldy dressing in the same style gear Wes Walz, Brad Bombardir, and Marián Gáborík once did.

No team seems to respect its history the way the Sharks do, and the best way they're able to do that is by not messing with anything when it's time to make a change.

Case in point is their newly released heritage jerseys, which are exact copies of their home jerseys from 1998 to 2007, celebrating the team's 35th anniversary.

These jerseys were initially introduced as an alternate in 1997 but instantly became their primary home sweaters the following year. The change in style from their original jerseys to this more modernized look was somewhat dramatic, but it worked because the team has one of the best color schemes in the league and one of the coolest logos.

It's hard to screw that up and having a massively successful team helped a lot, too.

Now with a pile of young star players like Macklin Celebrini, Will Smith, and William Eklund, among others, bringing this look back to celebrate the past and unite the eras just works so well.

Sometimes, simplicity works. And when the Boston Bruins decided to throw it back to their jerseys from the 1970s through the early 1990s, it was hard to argue with that idea.

The Bruins' jerseys from that era were as clean and perfect as it gets, and while most Original 6 teams nail it, Boston's sweaters from that particular period were especially good. Their new-old home and road set aren't exact copies of that, but they're awfully close and extremely good.

The significant difference between the jerseys then and now is that the old standing bear logo is situated on one of the shoulders.

Having something different to make it part of this era, yet not a full throwback, is fine; although we do miss seeing the "meth bear" shoulder logo something fierce. That said, the simple striping with these jerseys and the Bruins' perfect "spoked B" logo make these jerseys instantly outstanding.

For any new franchise, getting that first alternate jersey right is a big deal. It's almost as big a deal as nailing the home and road set and building a winning team that can compete for the Stanley Cup.

A really good alternate jersey, though, can lend some instant cool points, and the Seattle Kraken's new alternates are really good.

The new alternates are darker, almost resembling the Dallas Stars' blackout alternates, and the Kraken logo is blacked out with a neon outline that also glows in the dark.

Even though the glow-in-the-dark detail won't exactly work during a game, it's cool for pregame presentation and for fans when they're wearing them around elsewhere. It's neat, it's different, it's fine.

The striping on the sleeves is cool, and it fulfills what a good alternate jersey should be. It's a different take on what they already have, and it's distinct enough from their standard jerseys to create an entirely different vibe.

Now that the Utah Hockey Club is the Mammoth and has a new, snazzy logo to go with it, it meant it was time to get real jerseys with that logo and all the other secondary marks they came up with as well.

Fortunately, the foundation set by the "placeholder" jerseys they used last season helped set the mold for what the Mammoth rolled out. Although their road white sweaters remained the same with "Utah" written diagonally on them, the home sweaters with the primary Mammoth logo as the crest are a real beauty.

The striping is simple, and the shoulder logos are solid. It's all you could ask for from a new jersey and the look of it all is just really clean.

The team didn't have to reinvent the wheel to create nice-looking jerseys, given the team's colors, but having a nice logo to grab your attention is a huge help. Utah's full set is very good, and the home and road courses are different enough to provide a little something for everyone's taste.

Now about a future alternate jersey in baby blue...

What a glow-up for the Blues.

St. Louis changed its home and road jerseys, which had essentially remained unchanged since 1998.

Although their former home jersey will be an alternate this year, the new home and road jerseys were inspired by both the Blues' distant past and their recent appearances in the 2017 and 2022 Winter Classics.

The home blue jerseys were what they wore in the 2017 outdoor game, and they immediately became their alternate jersey for the next seven or eight years. The cream-colored jerseys they wore in the 2022 game were changed to plain white for their new road jerseys and even though they're both throwbacks, using them as their current shirts is a stroke of genius.

The jerseys are classic-looking and designed perfectly. Although we're sure there are some nitpicks out there, we're not hearing them right now. We're going to soak in how gorgeous these jerseys both are and feel good about the team adopting something that ought to help them sell many jerseys in Missouri and beyond.

As much as we're over the Capitals' home and road jersey set, we're all-in and all about this new alternate sweater.

Some of this design was inspired by the use of the "screaming eagle" logo from the late 1990s to early 2000s for the team's Reverse Retro sweaters in recent years, but everything about this look is a nod to the styles of the 1980s, particularly what the Caps wore back then.

The red base with the white shoulder yoke and the blue and white stripes are very much like what the Capitals wore from their inception and through most of the 1990s. Even though there aren't any stars going up the sleeve, this jersey doesn't need them.

This look is as good as it gets for something modern and bringing back an old, beloved logo is a great move for something that's meant to be a true alternate jersey.

If doing an alternate in this style is the way to help nudge the Capitals into updating their home and road sets, then we're even bigger fans of it.

If there's one thing we can guarantee you with jerseys, it's that when we rank out Winter Classic sweaters, the Detroit Red Wings 2014 jersey will probably be the runaway No. 1 pick.

That's what makes their 100th anniversary alternate jersey this year head and shoulders above everything else new this year.

Everything about the 2014 Winter Classic jersey that made that click came back. The proliferation of red, the cream-colored stripes, and the winged wheel crest logo is the same, but different.

The crest also features gold sparkles to add a touch of elegance. The number font is also the same as the one used in the 2014 jerseys, which gives it a retro feel but also makes it look unique.

This jersey is basically perfect, and it's not overthought or overdone, except maybe for the sparkles. However, it's a centennial celebration jersey, so it needs some flair like that.

If the Red Wings aren't able to snap their playoff drought this season, at least they're going to look incredible while doing so.