Hockey Canada and Nike unveil new Team Canada jersey
Heritage-inspired jersey will honour Canada’s 150 years as a nation
TORONTO, ON, August 2, 2016 - Hockey Canada, in partnership with Nike and players representing Canada’s national women’s, men’s, and sledge teams, unveiled the new Team Canada jersey in Toronto on Tuesday.
Designed by Nike to celebrate Canada’s 150th anniversary of Confederation, the jersey will make its competitive debut this week when 41 of the nation’s best under-20 players face off against teams from Finland,Sweden, and the United States in Plymouth, Mich., in their quest to represent Canada on home ice when the 2017 IIHF World Junior Championship returns to Toronto and Montreal this December.
Tailor-made for the nation’s athletes, the Team Canada jerseys give a nod to Canada’s rich history while also incorporating performance innovation by Nike.
“This jersey is designed to match performance with patriotism,” said Tom Renney, president and chief executive officer, Hockey Canada. “I have been lucky to be able to turn my passion for the game into a career; and what I realized very early on is that hockey goes well beyond what’s learned on the ice. Hockey is part of the fabric of our nation, and teaches all of the life lessons that build great citizens. We wanted to ensure that every aspect of this jersey had a deep meaning to Canadians, while still pushing the envelope with innovation. From the bottom white stripe to the embedded maple leaves, the jersey is emblematic of that intrinsic link between the game and the 35 million Canadians who carry the Maple Leaf in their hearts.”
Engineered using Nike AeroSwift Technology and woven with Ripstop Fabric, the jersey is made to endure the athletes’ fast and physical performance on the ice. Meshed zones under both arms support thermoregulation through optimal ventilation allowing players to stay cool during the game.
The jersey prominently features the Canada 150 logo on both sleeves, composed of a series of diamonds that represent the four original Confederation provinces, forming the shape of the iconic Maple Leaf. On the upper section of the jersey, rows of maple leaves fill the jersey’s shoulder caps, forming one of the most patriotic features ever seen on a national jersey. The icon of the Maple Leaf represents one voice and the repeat of the icon represents the nation rallying around hockey. The unique and classic double-stripe on the jersey’s sleeves returns, but has been accentuated with a black and red accent making the exclusive design pop like never before.
“In 2017, as we celebrate the milestone 150th anniversary of Confederation, we naturally reflect on the integral role that hockey plays in uniting Canadians,” says Raj Grewal, MP for Brampton East. “This year’s jersey reflects the pride this great game brings to our country and its importance in our culture.”
In addition to the upcoming National Junior Team development camp games, Team Canada fans will see the new jersey in action at the Ivan Hlinka Memorial Cupwhen the men’s summer under-18 team look to defend their golden streak this month, as well as during a three-game series hosted in Calgary featuring Canada’s National Women’s Under-18 Team and Canada’s National Women’s Development Team going head-to-head against their U.S. rivals.
The new Team Canada jersey is available on August 2 at Nike stores and online at Nike.com and HockeyCanada.ca/Shop, at Hockey Canada’s official retail partner SportChek, and other Canadian retailers from coast to coast.
About Hockey Canada
Hockey Canada is the governing body for hockey in Canada and a member of the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF), with a membership through its 13 provincial member associations of over 700,000 players, coaches and officials. Hockey Canada is a not-for-profit organization that creates leading-edge hockey development programs for its members to deliver in communities across Canada; provides consistent rules and regulations and various other membership services from coast to coast to coast; manages numerous regional, national, and international hockey championships and events; and leads the operation of all teams that represent Canada in international hockey competition. Hockey Canada’s mission is to “lead, develop and promote positive hockey experiences.”For more information on Hockey Canada, please visit HockeyCanada.ca or join our social media communities onFacebook, Instagram, SnapChat (@hockey_canada), and Twitter.
About NIKE Inc.
NIKE, Inc., based near Beaverton, Ore., is the world’s leading designer, marketer and distributor of authentic athletic footwear, apparel, equipment and accessories for a wide variety of sports and fitness activities. Wholly-owned NIKE, Inc. subsidiaries include Converse Inc., which designs, markets and distributes athletic lifestyle footwear, apparel and accessories; and Hurley International LLC, which designs, markets and distributes surf and youth lifestyle footwear, apparel and accessories. For more information, visit www.nikeinc.com and follow @Nike.
Where it all began
100 years later, a look back at the birth of Hockey Canada
NOTE: The following is an excerpt from “It’s Our Game” by Michael McKinley, which celebrates the 100-year history of Hockey Canada. The book is available now, online and at all major bookstores.
At 10 a.m. on the morning of Dec. 4, 1914, Canadian history was made. It was not a military triumph in the cold and bloody trenches of Flanders, where the soldiers fighting and dying in the colours of the Canadian Expeditionary Force now knew that they would not be home by Christmas. This history was far more genteel but no less significant in the forging of the national identity: next to the country’s majestic Parliament buildings in a chandeliered meeting room of the Chateau Laurier, Ottawa’s two-year-old grand hotel, a group of 21 hockey executives gathered to change the world.
Of course, on that chilly morning in late autumn, the stated purpose of hockey’s guardians seemed clerically humble, meeting to create “a governing body for the sport of hockey.” The Toronto Daily Star added the spin the next day, shouting out in an almost relieved headline, “National Hockey Body Formed at Last,” explaining that this new group would have “jurisdiction over the amateur game throughout the whole of Canada.”
Indeed, the men at that historic inauguration represented hockey’s breadth and complexity in a vast country just past its 47th birthday: from New Westminster, B.C., there was Reverend Albert E. Vert, a Presbyterian minister and local amateur athletics champion; from Winnipeg there was C.C. Robinson, an executive of the historic Winnipeg Victorias Hockey Club, winners of the Stanley Cup in the days of horse and carriage; from Montreal there was the American-born entrepreneur Leo Dandurand, future owner of the soon-to-be fabled Canadiens, and there was also William Northey, founder of the Canadian Arena Company, and chair of the meeting. In between those worthies there were representatives from Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario, with as many from Manitoba – six – as there were from Quebec.
The gathering reflected the breakaway growth of the sport in the Canadian landscape. Just four decades after James Creighton had staged the world’s first indoor hockey match in Montreal, the sport was so popular in Canada that it now needed a national government.
Rather, it needed a body to oversee the amateur game, now that hockey had gone so robustly professional. As Canada settled to the west, hockey went with it, and by the turn of the 20th century there were elite league teams, school teams, company teams, and women’s teams across the country.
By 1904 the game had such a range of players and popularity that the world’s first professional hockey league took off to rich success in the United States. In Canada, the game was still resolutely amateur, as and a result the great hockey event of the late winter of 1905 saw the Dawson City Nuggets, an amateur team from the Yukon, travel by bicycle, steam ship and railway across Canada to challenge for the Stanley Cup in Ottawa. They captured the imagination of the public, but got a pasting from the slick Ottawa Silver Seven, who sent them back to stare at the Northern Lights and contemplate their 32-4 beating over two games.
Hockey became professional in Canada in 1908, which only served to focus the distinction between those players who were paid, and those were not. And so in Ottawa on that December morning in 1914, the men who assembled at the Chateau Laurier also took a crack at creating an organization to govern both professional and amateur hockey, an idea “promptly opposed by many of the representatives present.”
But they won the agreement from Allan Cup trustee William Northey that this trophy would become the chief prize awarded by the new governing body. Montreal banker, steamship line owner and Canadian blueblood Sir H. Montague Allan, C.V.O. had donated the cup in 1908 to encourage excellence in amateur hockey after the Stanley Cup increasingly became the domain the championship trophy of the professionals. And now, it would become the symbol of excellence for Canada’s newest sporting body, one which would govern and grow the game for the next century and beyond.
After thanking the hotel manager for use of the room, the founders adjourned and went about their business of the day, having just created the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association.
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