When in need of revenue– make a new jersey.

That seems to be the tactic the NHL and Adidas are going when it comes to the new “Reverse Retro” jerseys that will be coming out for all 31 teams this upcoming season. Each team will have an imaginative retro jersey that will be a retro design, but the colors reversed. It’s not just a clever name.

While we’ve had some purported leaks when it comes to the idea of what could come from these (Pens, Flyers, Knights, Ducks, Bruins, Blue Jackets, and Caps), Adidas rolled out a teaser for every team. Chris Creamer of SportsLogos.net made a video about each team’s possible reverse retro garb.

There will be some hits, but there will be plenty of misses. I’m sure when it comes down to it, the idea of these will be in the eye of the beholder. Granted, this is great for the Hockey Relater Revenue that the NHL will need with the lack of fans in the stands, I don’t know if I like the road they are going down in terms of saturating the market with jerseys. It’s almost akin to the NBA and their “City” jerseys that Nike puts out every year for those teams.

I will concede that this is a new way to look at a retro jersey and that the actual retro jersey fad has been lacking any kind of excitement, I don’t know if this idea is any better or worse than the Stadium Series jerseys which basically are a “Turn Ahead The Clock” gimmick for teams playing in it. There’s only so many jerseys to look to and NHL has a lot of people claiming to be traditionalists that hate the idea of going too far outside of the box with retros.

Granted, I could be put into that latter box; but I feel myself more of the idea that these are going to look hideous and it’s just a Bullshit Cash Grab by the NHL and Adidas because they know people will clamor to these to be apart of the next wave of things.

Maybe it’ll be like the alternate jersey program in the mid-90s when it was just no-holds-barred and what was silly then will hold some kind of prestige after the fact. Hell, they may even be really, really good. But I won’t hold my breathe on either as of yet.