TSN’s BarDown had a fun chat with the Toronto Maple Leafs before the season. The Leafs played a game in which they had to call out teams around the league when asked various topics like worst visiting locker room, team you hated as a kidAnd fanbase with the craziest tweets.
One of the topics that sparked the most reactions among players was the team with the worst jerseys. Of the seven players whose answers were presented, two chose the Washington Capitals for having the worst jerseys in the NHL.
“I’m going to go with the Caps,” Ryan Reaves said. “Not a big fan.” You know what it is? These are the “capital letters” in the lowercase letters. I think they really missed the ball on that. Understand this, please.
Reaves’ jersey choice is probably not surprising given his noted disdain for playing against them. Plus, he had a ringside seat to see their jerseys hoist the Stanley Cup in Vegas while he had to watch from the press box like a healthy scratch.
Mitch Marner’s response was more tame.
“I think all the jerseys are pretty sick,” Marner said. “Maybe just Washington because they don’t have much in the way of colors or anything, but I still think their jerseys are pretty clean.”
Note: Marner plays for a team that only wears two colors on its jerseys.
Marner and Reaves’ opinions align well with the general opinion regarding the Capitals’ current uniforms. In a survey conducted before the start of preseason, advanced analytics writer and visualization guru JFresh got results showing exactly that.
The Capitals finished 31st vote in uniform at home And 31st in the vote for the best logo in JFresh surveys. But the Capitals may have a simple solution to fix things.
In an additional survey, the Capitals’ vintage Screaming Eagle logo finished as the sixth best vintage logo in the league. The team used this Screaming Eagle logo for both of their Reverse Retro jerseys, giving them arguably the two most successful versions of this scheme in the entire league.
For example, Capitals had the best-selling Reverse Retro jersey in 2020. The suits sold out within minutes online of their release on Shop.NHL.com. NHL players voted the Capitals Screagle design as the fifth best in the NHL. In RMNB poll, so do Capitals fans voted Screaming Eagle as the most popular logo of the Alex Ovechkin era in DC.
Alex Ovechkin scored in every game, he wore the black Screaming Eagle RR sweater last season and made a public appeal to bring it back.
Title photo: Alan Dobbins/MRNB
