Re-Imagining the NHL: Boston Bruins

Bruins' Current Jersey (est. 2007)

The Boston Bruins are an original 6 team, and it is time to bring them back to the beginning - color-wise that is.

The Color Scheme: Brown, Gold, Off-White.

The current color scheme for the Bruins is black, gold and white. It is cool because you can say that you are rooting for the black and gold (which sounds way better than rooting for the brown and gold), but I believe that the Bruins should embrace their past and have one of the more unique color palates in the NHL. Who else could pull off a brown jersey? No one, that's who.

Debut Jersey (est. 1926)

The original colors of brown and gold came from the then owner's Brookside Stores. Their main color scheme was brown and gold, so why not dump that on to the hockey team as well? The Bruins' first jersey had a lighter brown and brighter yellow.  I decided to make the brown very dark, almost like a black, and slightly dull out the gold to fit with the off-white third color. The off-white gives the whole jersey a vintage feeling, not to be confused with the new vintage fad in hockey, but to embrace the Bruins' stance as an original 6 team.

The Branding: Primary 'Spoked-B' Logo, Secondary 'Modern Bear' Logo / 'Winter B' Logo.

305cHL Boston Bruins' Logo Set

The Bruins have had several iterations of their primary logo over the years but nothing really compares to the current Spoked-B. It is clean and powerful. The Bruins are 'The Hub of Hockey', so, I knew that the 305cHL Bruins needed to look the part.

Gah! Seizure Bear!

The secondary "Modern Bear" logo is absolutely awesome. They really cleaned up their original logo and built a new brand to be proud of.  I thought that the jersey needed a bear of some sort but not the original - not the seizure bear, and definitely not the pooh bear.  So, it was down to the Bruins Bear or the Boston Bear. For some reason, 'Bruins' in the background with a bear standing on the word 'Boston' made more sense to me than the other way around. What if later you wanted to only use the bear standing on a word? A bear standing on the word 'Bruins' is redundant.

There were also plenty of Spoked-B secondary logos to choose from but the one that fit best for me - and really enveloped all of their history - was the Winter Classic Spoked-B.  I know that I merged all of their modern logos in trying to make a vintage-esque jersey, but I think it all works well together. 

1995. Gloriously Gross.

Home & Away Jerseys: Home Primarily Brown, Away Primarily Off-White.

I actually didn't change too much on these jerseys because I believe that the Bruins organization has gotten it right (as far as overall jersey layout is concerned). The small difference from the NHL layout to the 305cHL layout shows up in the striping and in the shoulder area.

Up until the current jersey, the striping has usually followed the pattern of two larger stripes with a smaller stripe in-between.  I don't think that works at all.  Fat, skinny, fat... meh.  Their current striping layout has all 3 stripes in proportion, which looks much cleaner, but could still be adjusted. So, I took a peek at the winter classic jersey and saw that they successfully pulled off the skinny-fat-skinny pattern.  That is much more appealing to me.  One thing I didn't like was that there was no spacing between the stripes, so I added a bit of space and think this  really makes the jersey stand out.

The Bruins' current shoulder design is pretty unique in the NHL, so I decided to keep that. But again, instead of having the stripes all smooshed together, I added a bit of space to make it work with the rest of the design.

Finally, on the Home Jersey, I decided to change the lettering/numbers to the off-white rather than the current gold. I believe this works better than the overabundance of gold on the back of the jersey.

Alternate 3rd Jersey: Primarily Gold.

Current Jersey Set (est. 2008)

Alternate jerseys usually give the designer free rein to use an different logo and a distinct design layout, but I think that designers should use this opportunity to link the whole color scheme together and create a package that works together as a complete set of three jerseys. 

With that said, the Bruins need a gold jersey that works. Gold is a rare color in the NHL (at least it was) and they need to embrace their uniqueness. For their 3rd Jersey I kept the modern Spoked-B, but alternated the secondary logos on the shoulders.  The stripes were squeezed back together to throw back to the Bruins entire history of 'little to no space between the stripes'.  The shoulders also follow the same striping rule.

Summary:

I believe that this jersey set is one of the most unique of the whole 305cHL.  It barely changes the current NHL layout but at the same time completely transforms the look and feel of The Bruins.  I am so happy with the strength of the home and away jerseys that I think they could stand alone as a two jersey set.  I toyed with the idea of all original 6 teams only having a home and away jersey, but where's the challenge in that?

Final thought: Beware of Seizure Bear.

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Images of jerseys from Chris Creamer's Sports Logos &  The Hockey Uniform Database.
Jersey Template from Icethetics.