Boston College Hockey Uniform Rankings

In case you missed it, Boston College Athletics recently announced a 10-year partnership with New Balance for 30 of their 31 varsity sports, including men’s and women’s hockey. Warrior, a subsidiary of New Balance and a well known hockey brand, will be outfitting the hockey teams — so it should be pretty exciting to see what they’ll come up with!

Last week, we ranked the men’s basketball uniforms over the years — in that same spirit, we are taking a look at the Boston College hockey uniforms throughout the years. This is definitely not an exhaustive list and skews towards more of the recent uniforms because finding photos of the older uniforms was harder than I expected, but it covers a solid amount of them (also, a lot of them are just iterations on older ones).

1. Men’s 1960’s throwbacks

Photo by Richard T Gagnon/Getty Images

Oh MAN, need I say more. When these were announced last year, I’m pretty sure the entire BC community swooned — the vintage logo, the clean white, the five stripe accent from the 60s — everything on this sweater is perfect. If there’s one thing I hope Warrior does, it’s to keep this exact design forever.

1.5. Women’s gold alternates

bceagles.com

These are wonderful gold alternates. The emblem on the front is my favorite thing about this sweater, and I believe it really sets the uniform apart from a lot of the other gold alternates we’ve seen throughout the years. It’s also unique to the women’s hockey team, which I also love. I don’t remember the BC bookstore ever selling these online or in-store, but they should.

2. Men’s gold alternates, 2012(ish)

Photo by J. Meric/Getty Images

The diagonal “Eagles” is the move, honestly! I know we have the throwbacks with the diagonal now, but if they were to bring back something similar to these as the gold alternates in the future, I would not hate it.

3. Men’s gold alternates, again!

Photo by Matthew J. Lee/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Another gold alternate in the top five? Yes! I honestly think that the gold alternates prior to 2016 were superior to the primary uniforms — which is, I guess, why they’re the alternates. This one is nice — I can’t decide if I like the white outline on the lettering and think they might’ve looked cleaner without it, but it’s a nice distinguishable look.

4. Home whites (2018-present)

Photo by Richard T Gagnon/Getty Images

Maybe I’m boring for putting these in the top five, but it’s a look that calls back to the two-toned sleeves of BC uniforms in the past, and looks clean while doing it.

I will say I was skeptical of these when they debuted in the fall of 2018 — I had gotten so used to the all-white sleeves from the years prior that it felt weird to have the bottom half a different color than the rest of the sweater, but the white contrasts cleanly with the darker shade of maroon and it looks good with the matching socks. These definitely grew on me!

5. Home whites (I think), at some point in the 2000s

Okay, I love the gold tone on these. It’s more radiant than the pastel gold/yellow accents that have been on the jerseys for a while now (as seen above) and I don’t know — it’s cool! I am also a huge fan of the font, for reasons I can’t articulate. Just good vibes, in my opinion. I’m personally not usually a fan of gold helmets, but this entire ensemble is a look, and very 2000s.

6. Away maroon, circa 1997 (?)

Photo by Mark Wilson/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

I will say this look does really remind me of UMD (maroon & gold solidarity), but I think that might just be because this photo is around 23 years old and the coloring could potentially be off. Again, I love the gold shade on these and think it really complements this specific shade of maroon. The all-gold Hockey East logo really pulls it all together.

7. 2014-2018 primaries

Photo by Billie Weiss/Getty Images

Photo by Richard T Gagnon/Getty Images

These are just fine in my opinion — it’s nothing to write home about, but it’s not like, bad. A little plain, but they get the job done!

8. Away maroons, 2018-present

Photo by Richard T Gagnon/Getty Images

I think it’s just the combination of this specific pastel gold with this specific maroon shade that I’m not the biggest fan of? The combination of pastel gold & maroon looks better in the uniform below from 2010, but I’m not sure if that’s the lighting or if it’s just a different shade of maroon. It might also be the abundance of pastel gold on the socks above that really sets this ensemble apart from 2010’s.

9. 2012-2014 primaries

Photo by Richard T Gagnon/Getty Images

Photo by Richard T Gagnon/Getty Images

Okay, now we’re at some of the sweaters that made me go “hmm...” These are similar to the ones right above in that they’re a bit plain, but I’m really not a huge fan of the stripes down the side, for some reason. Maybe these were hits at the time, though!

10. Men’s gold alternates, 2016-2019

Photo by Fred Kfoury III/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

So this setup is actually pretty clean, but I give credit to Joe Woll’s pads & mask design for really pulling everything together in this specific picture. I wasn’t a huge fan of these gold alternates mainly because it looked like the Eagle had been screen printed on? I do like the shoulder design, but not enough to rank this higher with the other gold alternates.

11. Men’s gold alternates, yet again, 2020-present

BC Hockey, Twitter

I... I don’t know about this one. I think they’re a similar shade to most of the earlier gold alternates, but there’s something about these that just feel a little off? They also kind of look like practice jerseys even though I know that BC has had similar logos in the front before, as seen below. I think it’s the total lack of maroon on the sweaters that makes this a little worse.

Photo by Michael Tureski/Icon SMI/Icon Sport Media via Getty Images

There you have it, folks! It’ll be exciting to see what New Balance/Warrior will bring to the hockey gear, and if there will be any huge changes from what we’ve seen in the past few years.