This installment of the Worst to First Jerseys features the Calgary Flames, and part of the series is hosting the full posts on the blog of the team that’s being featured. The full version of this post is on the blog FlamesNation. You can check it out by clicking here. And much thanks to Kent Wilson from FlamesNation for hosting this post.

Do you want your team featured? I’ll be contacting blogs for each team throughout the year, so keep a look out for it. Or, let me know which blog I should be contacting for your favourite team. For now, here’s a preview of my post about the Flames:

Any regular reader of my blog knows that I’m a die-hard Canucks fan, but I promise not to let that bias influence me while I rank all the jerseys the Flames ever wore. I will not rank the 1994 home jerseys higher than the 2004 road jerseys, simply because I have better memories from the Flames wearing that jersey. I promise.

Here’s how this works: I’ll count down, from worst to first, all the jerseys the Flames have ever worn. Homes and aways will be lumped into the same category (so, more of a jersey “era”) and I won’t worry about small changes (like slightly changed positions of piping for example). Third jerseys will stand on their own. And I’m focusing on the jerseys only, not the entire uniform. The jersey images are compliments of the fine people over at nhluniforms.com. For the Flames, there’s 6 different jerseys/eras. And we’ll start with the worst one:

8. 1995-2000 Home and Away Jerseys

The previous team I did this kind of post for was the Canucks, who have had a bunch of different logos and colour schemes over their existence. Calgary is very different in that their logo has never changed and their colour scheme has always been predominantly red and gold. So, some of the conversation in this post will be about the details of the jerseys.

But in this jersey, the change in the details from other jerseys is pretty obvious. I’m all for not always following conventions and trying new things, but I’m not sure what the designer was thinking – or what their blood-alcohol level was at – when they designed this. The piping along the bottom of the jersey inexplicably comes angling straight up towards the logo and then bluntly stops.

It feels like it was just slapped there with no purpose. If you’re going to try something different, or innovative, make sure there’s a reason for it. But this just looks ridiculous and out-of-place.

Anyone who reads my blog knows I generally like simplicity in design, so the other problem I have with the jersey is the crazy amount of stripes happening on the sleeves and base of the jersey. For example, on the white jerseys’ sleeves, it goes yellow, white, black, white, and all different widths, on a red background. It’s just too much and, after reading about the rest of the jerseys, you’ll probably agree.

The one thing that this jersey did have going for it was that this is one of the first jerseys to break the mold in terms of typography and fonts used. Tampa Bay was the first team, in 1994-95, to not have the the standard angled-corner fonts/numbers that literally every team in the league had. And the following year, Calgary (along with Anaheim and LA, on their third jerseys, and Washington, on their regular jerseys) tried something new as well. In that sense, this jersey was a bit of a trailblazer.

Jersey Recommendation: #16 Stillman – He was with the Flames almost exclusively while they had this jersey, and was a relatively solid producer at that time.

(Note: I now regret not putting #14 Fleury in as the recommendation. An iconic Flame, for better or worse. It’s definitely more fitting.)

Read the rest of this post by clicking here.