1995-96 Vancouver Canucks Trevor Linden Jersey

Today kicks off a new theme to fill the dog days of the hockey off season where the historical events in hockey history are few and far between.

Without further delay, we give you The Curious, Weird and Ugly™ Collection. we don't actually dislike all of the jerseys that we will be featuring, in fact we like a few of them very much, but there are others that are so bad, so horrible, that they make us downright angry that they ever saw the light of day in the first place. Seriously, it was bad enough that some dummy came up with the concept in the first place, but then a whole series of people in authority had to approve them before they ever saw the light of day!

Without further delay, a 1995-96 Vancouver Canucks Trevor Linden jersey.

Now, there had been diagonal elements in jerseys prior to the introduction of this Vancouver Canucks red (or is it black?) first-ever alternate jersey, such as the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim jerseys of 1993-94, but gradients were a new development in 1995-96. To the best of our knowledge the dye-sublimation printing process, which allowed for the gradients to be incorporated into jersey designs had never been used for NHL jerseys before, but the process made it's presence known with the first NHL alternates introduced in early 1996 with gradients incorporated into the designs from the Los Angeles Kings, Pittsburgh Penguins and Vancouver Canucks.

While the diagonally striped jerseys from the Mighty Duck of Anaheim and the St. Louis Blues had a different color below the lower stripe, the Canucks was really the first genuine two color affair, with the amount of black and red being much closer to 50-50 than the Mighty Ducks mainly eggplant jerseys and the Blues predominately blue road sweaters.

The main design element of the Canucks jersey is the rather clever extension of the coloring of the Canucks logo across the body of the jersey. The black background of the logo, as was the yellow lettering of the word "Canucks" that made up the skate blade, were both extended outward from the diagonally oriented logo, with the striping on the left side of the jersey fading away to nothing. An odd decision was the upward angle the stripes took on the right side of the jersey, giving the stripes a "checkmark" look instead of having them continue uninterrupted to the side of the jersey, as the Mighty Ducks and Blues jerseys did.

Yet another curious choice was that the upward tick to the chest stripes were not in alignment with the arm stripes. You would think as long as they decided to make the chest stripes change direction in midstream, they would have continued those stripes at a matching angle across the arm instead of orienting the arm stripes at their own unique angle independent of the chest stripes.

Unlike some of the contemporary alternates introduced by other clubs that same season, which were quickly rejected failures, the Canucks new alternate jerseys lasted two full seasons, worn with solid black socks their first season and with red socks with stripes similar to the jerseys the second. No additional patches were worn on this alternate jersey during it's brief existence.

This Canucks jersey does have a few things in it's favor though. The list of players who wore it is rather impressive, as the Canucks were filled with recognizable names like Alexander Mogilny, captain Trevor Linden, Cliff Ronning, Martin Gelinas, Esa Tikkanen, Bret Hedican, Adrian Aucoin, Markus Naslund, goaltender Kirk McLean and superstar Pavel Bure, who was temporarily wearing sweater #96 at the time.

Another thing it has going for it is the way it fits in with the home and road jerseys, as it uses the same main crest and uses what is normally a trim color, red, as a primary color. The names and numbers are all very legible, with the yellow standing out nicely from the red background, and are done in the same fonts as the home and road jerseys for a consistency across the entire set.

Overall, we classify this jersey as "Curious" due to mainly the "checkmark" chest stripe and the introduction of the gradient stripes.

Here's a lucky find, the Vancouver Canucks red alternates in game action versus the Hartford Whalers (for a truly excellent jersey matchup), although it's more fist throwing action than puck shooting action, but sometimes you take what you can get. Don't forget to take notice of future Italian National Team goaltender Jason Muzzati in net for the Whalers.