A new look for a new century.
As you may have heard, next season is a big one for the Boston Bruins: the franchise will celebrate its centennial season, its 100th year of play.
The team was founded in 1924, and will be the third NHL team to celebrate 100 seasons (after Montreal and Toronto).
As you can imagine, the team has all kinds of stuff planned for next season, including a new look: the B’s unveiled their “centennial anniversary crest” this afternoon, a new version of the spoked-B that will feature on their uniforms this season.
The logo:
Boston Bruins/NHL
Per the team, the inspiration for the logo:
“The Centennial anniversary crest features vintage spokes that harken back to as far as the 1950s, as well as the current serif varsity ‘B’ that has been seen on Causeway since 2007. The simple spokes were made famous by the likes of two-time Stanley Cup Champion Bobby Orr and the Big Bad Bruins, and later legends of the Black & Gold, Ray Bourque and Cam Neely, while the serif ‘B’ was worn by the iconic teams of Zdeno Chara and Patrice Bergeron, which brought the Stanley Cup back to Boston for the first time in 39 years back in 2011.”
Overall, it’s kind of a mash-up (in a good way) of all kinds of spoked-B’s from the past, combining into this single-season B.
I’m admittedly a little unclear how, exactly, the team plans on using this.
It appears that this crest will replace the B’s current crest on their home and away jerseys, but I’m not sure if they’re just slapping this on the current get-up or issuing completely new jerseys as well.
The team said this crest “will be featured on the team’s uniforms for the upcoming season” and that “the modern spoked-B will take a brief hiatus,” so I think they intend to use it as the primary crest.
In the team’s reveal animation (at the bottom of this post), there’s a brief shot of what looks like a different version of the logo:
Boston Bruins/NHL
If you take both of these as a package, it may be that the one directly above here would be used on the white away jerseys (due to the black outline), while the one at the top of the post (with the gold outline) will be used on the black home jerseys.
When Montreal had their centennial year back in 2008-2009, they primarily wore their regular jerseys but rotated in a few other styles over the course of the year.
(Remember the barber pole jerseys?)
We’ll likely get more clarification in the coming days, as the team will want to start merchandise sales if they’re going to issue new jerseys.
The B’s unveiled their “centennial season” crest a while back too, seen below; it remains to be seen if that will be used as a chest patch, shoulder patch, or not featured on the jerseys.
Boston Bruins/NHL
The Bruins outstanding visual/graphics team also released a cool animation to support the launch:
The past meets the present.
Introducing the #NHLBruins Centennial crest. pic.twitter.com/F1dclRLjby
— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) June 27, 2023
If nothing else, you’ll have plenty of cool stuff to buy, right?
It’s been hard to keep up with the Winter Classic, Reverse Retros, new alternates…Fanatics’ stock is going up!