NBC’s coverage of the 2018-19 NHL season continues with the 2019 Winter Classic between the Boston Bruins and Chicago Blackhawks. Coverage begins at 1 p.m. ET from Notre Dame Stadium. You can watch the game online and on the NBC Sports app by clicking here.
The Chicago Blackhawks and Boston Bruins will play in the 11th NHL Winter Classic on Tuesday at Notre Dame Stadium. To add a little bit more football flavor to the event, NBC Sports teamed up with The Barn Creative to create these unique uniforms for both teams.
So what if the Blackhawks and Bruins were football teams? Here’s what they would look like and The Barn Creative explains how they came up with the designs:
The Blackhawks
“Anyone who knows sports design knows that when you say Chicago Blackhawks a couple key things come to mind. That killer primary logo, one of the coolest secondary logos in sports, and stripes. This Winter Classic the Hawks are going all monotone which out of the gate is a design challenge.
“The double striped yoke was a simple key. We know we needed to have that clean and upfront to be recognized as this years Winter Classic jersey. From there is where it got interesting. The striping pattern on the arms was too complex for football, so we brought them to the body. Stripes through the chest ala the jerseys from the 40’s - 50’s, but cutting it off inside an under arm panel made this a nice, clean, and modern touch. The secondary logo goes to the arm, because it it too cool not to have. In the pants we wanted to bring back the Chicago Flag Stars because it is such a nice touch for local fans. At The Barn we don’t think enough NHL teams are doing this properly. Nashville does it well, but that is almost it.
“For the helmet we wanted to show off one of the best logos in sports in an oversized look. Center stripe taken from the sock pattern makes this clean and intentional. The small pops of red in the brackets and gloves really bring this home for us as an overall look. Inside the gloves we have another touch to the Chicago Flag but with Blackhawks flare. Each cup win is inside the stars and the Madhouse line coming replacing the flag paneling.”
The Bruins
“Boston was a little more challenging in realms of not simply cloning the jersey. And as we dove deeper into the project it became clear that the side solution was that we were creating a replacement for those awful Steelers jerseys from a couple years back.
“The arm pattern on the Bruins Winter Classic jersey actually looks beautiful on a football uniform. Once we realized it didn’t make the whole thing look like a bumble bee we were off to the races. For the sake of this project we went with the Big Winter Classic logo on the chest again breaking the football norm, but it’s a fun project so lets have some fun. (Yes we did make an entirely different uniform based off the Bruins 1930’s uniform when they actually had a number on the chest and B on the arm, it looked good, but not challenging enough.) We added the small number in the left chest because without it the jersey seemed to plain. The tail striping was translated into a yellow belt to round it out.
“The Bruins have yet to release a full uniform shot so we got to take a couple more liberties with the rest of the design. Much like the Blackhawks a couple things come to mind when you think of the Bruins, and for us you have to have yellow socks. We took the bottom half of this uniform and did an homage to the history of the team. Big Bold white pant stripe from the classic Bobby Orr days, but with the Stanley Cup Shamrocks inlayed in it. Then a sock pattern inspired by the bolder stripes of the Ray Bourque era (we know there is a yellow space, but it didn’t look right without it)
“The helmet is an amalgamation of both the team history and the 2019 Winter Classic jersey. Center stripe pattern and large B for the 2019 outdoor game, but the modern angled design of the yellow paying tribute to those classic yellow socks. We always thought we would have a black Bruins helmet, anything else seemed weird until we saw it in white. That clean white with the yellow and brown make it look like a whole uniform and really clean classic “kit” from 1940’s college football. We had some fun with the gloves. Big, Bold, “617”. We had silly designs with Chowder, Beantown, or Dirty Water references - but didn’t seem right for an original 6 team.
“Here is to the 2019 Winter Classic teams and ‘The Rink that Rockne Built.’”
[WATCH LIVE – COVERAGE BEGINS AT 1 P.M. ET – NBC]
Mike Tirico will host the network’s Winter Classic pre-game coverage alongside the NHL Live studio team of host Kathryn Tappen, and analysts Mike Milbury, Keith Jones and Jeremy Roenick. Six-time Emmy Award-winner and La Fontaine, Ind., native Mike ‘Doc’ Emrick, U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame member Eddie Olczyk, and ‘Inside-the-Glass’ analyst Pierre McGuire will have the call from Notre Dame Stadium.