“They look, uh, a little plain”

The headline is a quote from Edmonton Oilers president Cal Nichols in an article in yesterday’s Edmonton Sun. Sports columnist Terry Jones devoted his Sunday offering to “the total travesty of the Edmonton Oilers ‘pyjamas‘,” the road whites in particular.
Here’s more from the team president:

“I have to be careful here. Reebok paid a lot of money,” [Nichols] said of the project bringing the new uniforms to teams around the league and the obvious NHL memo to everybody in the game that they all must love them.
I told Nichols I was writing about the awful new Oilers silks.
“I think that would be a good article to write,” he said. “But just put me down for saying I liked our old uniforms. I don’t want to sound like an old stick-in-the-mud who can’t go contemporary.”

You can be sure the Oilers’ faithful are a little more than underwhelmed. In his column, Jones suggests that the reader should Google “Oilers” and “uniforms” where you’ll find comments such as

“Ice Capades awful!“

“I like the traditional horizontal stripes at the bottom of the old jersey.“

“Why mess with tradition?“

“Butt ugly. It looks like someone who hates the Oilers designed this one.“

Apparently, there was a method to the madness.

“We wanted change. A lot of things motivated us to look at change. We have a new locker room. A new team. We saw it as rejuvenation. A breath of fresh air,” said [Oilers’ CEO Patrick] LaForge.
“It was meant to be a sort of a Baltimore Ravens look,” he said.

So how do you get your stripe back?
“We can do it,” says LaForge. “But not until 2009-2010.”

A tap of the stick on the ice to Kukla’s Korner for the primary assist.