.@hootbot and I are having brunch and watching figure skating and a hockey commercial came on that featured Jofa helmets and it reminded me of terrible 80s hockey fashion so let's deconstruct some of that.
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Ok so as a hockey kid there are a few things worth pointing out but none so egregious as the Cooperalls. Cooperalls were an unforgivable sin. They were a dark part of history.
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Proper hockey pants end above the knees. This is the correct look. Cooperalls made you look like you were wearing an ill-fitting tracksuit. Unbelievably, a few teams included them as part of their uniform for a short period of time.
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On the other hand, look at that Hartford Whalers logo. It is one of the great logos of all time. The whale tail. The H in the negative space. Today's graphic designers should consider themselves lucky if they ever come up with something half as good.
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The excellence of the logo only makes the Cooperalls worse.
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Lastly, let's talk about the stick. Yes, sticks are part of hockey fashion. This was pre-composite days. He's carrying a Sherwood PMP 5030. I cannot describe to you just how classic this stick is. Everyone had one. Incredibly, they still make them.
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The 5030 had what we'd call today a mid-kick profile. Sticks back then were haphazardly engineered. For a brief time in the 90s there were aluminum sticks, which was precisely the disaster you imagine it would be.
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Finally, we have the blue gloves. These.... these don't work. Look, I know the team colors were green/blue/grey but the blue appears nearly nowhere else. Catastrophe.
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Before the Whalers moved to Carolina in the mid-90s, they got their shit together uniform-wise. For a period of time that overlapped my youth, they practiced at South Windsor arena, which every 90s hockey kid would recognize from USA Hockey magazine.
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I used to play for South Windsor. That was my home rink. Instead of plexiglass, it had chainlink fence around the boards. This too was as much a disaster as you could imagine.
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My dad was my coach, and he used to impress us by putting slapshots straight through the fence. You can imagine what pros would do. This might explain why the Whalers were an abysmal team.
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South Windsor Arena still exists; they put up glass in the late 90s, and the shop is still one of the best out there. I still buy my gear there. They have a remarkable collection of sticks. A few years ago, I bought a PMP 5030 there. It's... it's not a good stick in 2018.
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But goddamn, it is still sexy to hold. fin.
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End of conversation
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This takes me wayyy back. Used to leaf through stacks of Hockey Digest and cards my grandfather would mail to me, dazzled by both the good & goofy uniforms
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