Ducks’ Reverse Retro third-best selling of jersey series

The Anaheim Ducks took a risk when it came to the design for their “fourth jersey,” that would be part of the league’s Reverse Retro series with Adidas. While they were right to return to the franchise’s original color palette, the Wild Wing logo design was previously laughed out of already limited use in the 1995-96 season.

But the times have changed, and it turns out if you’re going to make a fourth jersey design, people are okay with a little more fun. Per Mark J. Burns of the Sports Business Journal, the reimagined Wild Wing jersey is the third-best seller of the series for the first week of December:

The top five sellers are the Washington Capitals’ 1990s “screaming eagle,” the New York Rangers’ Lady Liberty design, Wild Wing, the Colorado Avalanche’s twist on their Quebec Nordiques roots and the Arizona Coyotes “Peyote Coyote” from 1999-2003. Sale numbers come from Dec. 1, when the jerseys officially launched, through Dec. 6.

The numbers don’t lie: the most popular jerseys from this series are from teams that largely didn’t play it safe. I certainly hope that this makes the league more open to taking risks with their third jerseys designs, and even future team re-designs.

There’s just a lot of repetition throughout the current NHL jerseys and color schemes. For example, this series saw multiple teams using some shade of purple, a color that doesn’t have a mainstay on any team’s color primary palette.

I think that same kind of boredom with the Ducks’ current logo and color palette led to the success of their Reverse Retro design. The webbed ‘D’ is among the league’s worst logos and choosing Black to be the primary home jersey color is uninspiring. And frankly, as someone who went to a high school whose colors were also orange, black and white: orange is not a good color on most people.

The Reverse Retro jersey, as well as other apparel and accessories are available at the Anaheim Team Store, the NHL shop and from Adidas while supplies last.