Big changes came to the B.C. Hockey League on Feb. 1 when five Alberta-based teams joined to play a mini-season and playoffs before jumping to the BCHL full time this fall. With this change of league, the teams might want to explore a fresh look to start fresh, but also honouring where they came from.
Over the years I have come up with ideas and concepts for hockey jerseys ranging from the BCHL to the National Hockey League through hand drawings and the EA SPORTS NHL games. Now that I’m a graphic designer, I’ve had the opportunity to come up with real jersey concepts for teams in the BCHL.
This time around is a focus on the five teams located in Alberta. I have done these before for the four Mainland-based teams that you can see here.
These are my concepts and not the actual jerseys the teams will wear. The logos have stayed the same with some minor tweaks for some different looks. I have been following closely how the teams have brought out their colours over the years and incorporated that into the jerseys for each team.
Blackfalds Bulldogs
The Blackfalds Bulldogs are one of the newest teams to be introduced into the world of college track hockey, joining in the 2021-22 Alberta Junior Hockey League season. Before that, The Bulldogs were known as the Calgary Mustangs.
The Bulldogs’ current look is based on the NHL All-Star jerseys that were introduced in 2019. Blackfalds’ colour scheme is mainly black and white with some grey hints, while they also have a third jersey that has a tan/gold colour.
These concepts are based on the Los Angeles Kings chrome third jerseys with the big thick grey stripe onto a black cuff and a little hit of the tan/gold above the grey strip. This concept might change if the Bulldogs use a new team name as the current one conflicts with the Alberni Valley Bulldogs.
Brooks Bandits
The Brooks Bandits have been around since 2000-01. The Bandits’ jersey history is difficult to track, but since 2006, they used an Anaheim Ducks-style jersey. The change they made to these jerseys over the years was replacing the wordmark featuring a front-facing bandit with gloves and a stick with just a profile of the bandit’s head. When you win four national championships, you don’t want to mess with that mojo.
This concept keeps the style of the Ducks but this time takes the style of their 30th anniversary third jersey they introduced this past season. The white jerseys have a red and navy stripe with a grey stripe above that. The dark jersey swaps the navy stripe to white.
Okotoks Oilers
The Okotoks Oilers arrived in the AJHL for the 2005-06 season. The Oilers have one of the more unique colour schemes with forest green and gold with some black. The current Oilers threads kind of have a Hartford Whalers/1990s Boston Bruins-style feel to them.
Okotoks has a couple of variations of their jerseys with different main logos. They have dark jerseys with just the oil rigger head and white jerseys with the full logo, including a wordmark, the rigger with a stick, and an oil tower on the top right end.
My concept keeps that awesome colour scheme and uses the two main logos — just the head of the rigger on the dark jersey and the full logo, including the wordmark, on the white. The striping style is inspired by the NHL’s Edmonton Oilers from their early 2000s third jersey that was brought back as a reverse retro in 2022.
Sherwood Park Crusaders
The Sherwood Park Crusaders are one of the oldest teams in Western Canada. The Cru is the second longest-continuously run team behind their now-fellow BCHL club Merritt Centennials. The Crusaders have been in operation since the 1978-79 season.
Sherwood Park has a very basic look to its jerseys currently. The Crusaders only have green and white in their colour scheme — although sometimes incorporating black. Their logo is a classic old-school style logo of an old English font “C”.
My concept incorporates the old with the new. With the Crusaders being an older franchise, I went and found the Dallas Stars Winter Classic jersey design. The white jersey has green shoulder yokes and one solid green stripe on the sleeves and bottom. The dark jersey mirrors the white jersey by swapping the green shoulders and stripes to white as well as inverting the main logo from green to white.
Spruce Grove Saints
Spruce Grove had a few different looks over the years. Coming about in the 2004-05 season, the Saints had a stylized “S” with a wing and halo and three stars as their logo. In recent years, they brought back the logo from when the Saints were in St. Albert, which is a rework of the World Hockey Association’s Minnesota Fighting Saints.
The Saints’ current look is the hockey-playing angel logo with a blue and yellow colour scheme. The jersey design is based on the dark jersey for the Montreal Canadiens. Spruce Grove’s dark jersey is blue with a large yellow stripe through the chest and middle of the sleeves with white trim along with two yellow and white stripes around the waist. The white jersey has the same yellow stripe but it is lined with blue instead of white. and the white stripe on the bottom is blue.
My concept for the Saints pays tribute to the original Minnesota WHA jersey which if you know, is the same jersey as the Charleston Chiefs from the movie Slap Shot.
To try and avoid any Slap Shot copyright issues that might come with the jersey, the New York Islanders have very similar jerseys so I used their mid-2000s style for inspiration. The dark jersey is blue with a white stripe and a yellow cuff. The bottom has white and yellow stripes. The white jersey mirrors the dark jersey, moving the yellow to the white stripe and changing the yellow cuff to blue. The waist stripes stay in the same configuration on the light jersey, with the white stripe replaced with blue.