The Blue Jackets Hometown Remix jersey misses the mark

The NHL released their Hometown Remix series of jerseys today, with all 32 teams giving a different take on the "Reverse Retro" sweaters from a few years ago. In this instance, teams were tasked with giving a unique, authentic celebrations of the fans, fabric, and local culture of each NHL team.

For the Blue Jackets, that apparently means going gray. Yes, the team named for the coats worn by the Union Soldiers of the Civil War, is going to sport the color of the Confederate South for 13 games this season.

First reaction: they are pretty sharp.

Right off the hop, I like the design. The cannon excellent, and they should honestly be using it as their main logo. The stripes look good, and the details throughout the sweater are definitely well thought out and well presented. These really pop up close.

Overall, it's a clean design, and it will look good from afar as well. Whoever designed these definitely took a lot of inspiration from the team's Stadium Series jerseys, which may have been the best kit this team has ever worn. It was, in my opinion.

Curiously, the team has never put those uniforms back on, despite the generally positive reception and the fact that the team won that outdoor game. I'm not sure if this is an NHL thing or a Blue Jackets thing, but I don't think many people would have been disappointed with a simple rehashing of those.

Other teams used that thought process, such as the Anaheim Ducks, Washington Capitals, and the New York Islanders. In fact, are those Isles jerseys discernable from the ones they wore in the 90s?

Instead, the Blue Jackets decided to go with a similar design and change their color scheme. Which honestly does not make sense for this franchise.

Gray is a poor choice.

It's pretty simple. For a franchise that has named and prided itself off of something historical, they completely missed the mark with the color schemes on this entire kit. And it doesn't really feel like they had to make any major changes.

There are other teams with colors in their name, who stuck with their main color scheme. The Detroit Red Wings aren't wearing blue, for example. The St Louis Blues aren't going orange.

That means the Blue Jackets did not need to go with gray for their main color on these. It's a slap in the face to history, being the color worn by the opposition during the Civil War side that the team named itself after.

The easy solution here would have been running it back with their Stadium Series jerseys, maybe with some slight adjustments. Those kits were so, so good; and outside of the striping and the colors, these HR kits are somewhat similar. It's a shame they didn't choose a better base color.

Why not redo these with white being the main base? Other teams are using white or cream for their base. Heck, if the goal is to lean harder into the history of hockey in the city, where is the Columbus Chill reference? I think many of us would have settled for a black/white/silver jersey with the cannon logo.

Instead, we got an odd half-measure jersey that, in my opinion, misses the mark.

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