Re-Ranking the Best NHL Winter Classic Jerseys After Blackhawks and Blues Reveal

In case you haven't looked at the calendar yet, we're racing toward the end of the year and headlong into the next NHL Winter Classic. This season's edition of the annual outdoor game spectacular is back at Wrigley Field in Chicago for the first time since 2009 and features the Chicago Blackhawks and St. Louis Blues—a rematch of the 2017 Winter Classic in St. Louis.

Aside from the game itself, the most exciting part of the Winter Classic is seeing the jerseys each team wears for the game, and we're getting our first look at what Chicago and St. Louis will be wearing for this year's game on December 31 via Fanatics.

As cool as these new jerseys are, we're going to rank out how they stack up against previous Winter Classic jerseys and rank them out as we see fit. When it comes to looking good on the ice, this year's duds are not duds at all, which is saying something because both teams have been part of the Winter Classic before.

Our hottest of takes will surely get you fired up and want to comment at us about them and, lucky for you, we encourage you to do so and let us know your thoughts.

We're kicking off the top 10 with the newest jerseys for the St. Louis Blues. It's the Blues' third time playing in the Winter Classic, and they're getting a boost here for the brand-new and unique look.

This particular style is one we've seen in the past from the Nashville Predators in the 2020 Winter Classic with a script look as opposed to a logo crest of some kind. It's a bold move for the Blues, whose blue note logo is one of the best in sports, but in their previous two Winter Classic appearances in 2017 and 2022, they've done throwback-like jerseys with that logo. This time around they took it in another direction.

This jersey will most likely get a lot of heat from fans, and while we generally like teams that stick to what looks best, do something cool, and be innovative, taking it in an entirely different direction is worthy of respect. After all, it's hard to do something new and different. Given the rest of the Blues jersey history, this one is certainly one of a kind.

Speaking of the 2020 Winter Classic, the host Dallas Stars knocked it out of the park with their green jerseys.

This jersey paid homage to Dallas's history of hockey and reminded everyone that Dallas is, indeed, known also as "Big D." The massive letter "D" with "Stars" written through it with the letter "A" being swapped out for a star hammered home the team's name.

Paying tribute to the city's hockey history was a great move here since most fans were/are unaware of hockey being played in Dallas, or even Texas before the Stars landed there in the 1990s from Minnesota. A cool-looking jersey and an education point? Yes, please.

Fortunately for the Stars, we're only grading the jerseys and not the khaki hockey pants because...yikes.

The Boston Bruins have been in a few Winter Classics, but it's their jerseys from their first appearance in 2010 at Fenway Park that remain the best of the bunch.

The older spoked-B logo jumps out at us here on the front with the bulbous letter "B," but it doesn't stand out nearly as much as the copious amount of yellow going on here. A yellow jersey with brown and white stripes shouldn't look this good. Anything with that color scheme shouldn't look good at all, and yet this looks like something from another time that manages to look great in a modern setting.

It would've been easy enough for the Bruins to wear something black and yellow, which they did in their next couple of Winter Classic appearances, and that helps this jersey look even better in retrospect. Yellow doesn't always work, but in this case, it worked out perfectly.

In the Philadelphia Flyers' two appearances in the Winter Classic, they've managed to play it somewhat safe by putting their iconic logo on the front and going from there. When they hosted the Winter Classic in 2012, they did that again but used a shade of orange that managed to look instantly classic.

But what made these Flyers special is highlighted in the photo. The captain and alternate captain letters were set in a keystone shape, and since Pennsylvania is known as the Keystone State, it was the kind of nod that helped give it a supremely local touch.

The Flyers embracing their perfect logo and going wild with the color orange are what the team is best known for. Well, that and beating up any opponent that dared to look at them, but really, it's the orange and the black that makes the Flyers who they are. It also helped that they and the New York Rangers gave us one of the most incredible finishes to a Winter Classic in the event's history when Henrik Lundqvist stopped Danny Brière on a penalty shot in the final seconds of the game to preserve the win.

When the Seattle Kraken hosted the Winter Classic a year ago, they didn't let being a brand-new team in the NHL stop them from using ancient inspiration in designing their jerseys.

The Kraken's look was inspired by the Seattle Metropolitans of the 1910s with the horizontal stripes and the salmon red Kraken logo in the middle with the team's name spelled out in the Kraken logo itself.

It's that Metropolitans style that many fans wanted to see the Kraken adopt with their jerseys when the franchise debuted, but seeing it come to life in a modernized way in Kraken team colors at the Winter Classic gave all of us a warm feel of nostalgia for something we've only seen in black and white photos and throwback sweaters made new again.

Having Seattle and Vegas face off in the Winter Classic gave everyone what they wanted by having different teams take part in the event, but it was the Kraken that came through and provided everyone with what they wanted to see in extremely cool jerseys.

While it's true we rarely see Canadian teams play in the Winter Classic, anytime they've been in one they've crushed it with their jerseys. When the Montréal Canadiens went to Foxborough, Massachusetts, to face the hated Boston Bruins, they made sure to bring a look no one would forget.

The Canadiens' blanc jerseys that went heavier on the bleu rather than the rouge contrasted perfectly against the Bruins' mostly black jerseys and despite the Habs being the visiting enemy team, they played like heroes in these jerseys en route to a 5-1 win over the Bruins.

The jersey was very much inspired by one of their earliest jerseys from the 1920s by having the globe on it (this time on the sleeves, rather than the front crest) and in doing that gave it a very unique and semi-historical look. That's tough to do something original with the Canadiens given their long history of having a virtually unchanged jersey, but they pulled it off gorgeously in 2016.

Every time we rank out Winter Classic jerseys, this Pittsburgh Penguins version from 2011 always ranks highly despite the fact that Pittsburgh fans don't much care for it.

The Penguins' primetime showdown with the Washington Capitals in 2011 was one of the best-looking games in the event's history with the Pens decked out in these throwback-styled jerseys with various elements from the franchise's history along with the Capitals wearing straight-up throwbacks from the 1970s and 80s.

But it's this dark blue jersey with baby blue stripes and a supremely cool-looking circular Penguins crest logo that won the day. This jersey with the throwback number font is a perfect modernized throwback and it was so popular the Penguins wore it as an alternate for a short time after the Winter Classic.

Just looking at it, you can understand why it was such a hit despite the bad vibes that surrounded it because of the hit Sidney Crosby took from David Steckel during the Winter Classic game.

The Chicago Blackhawks will play in their fifth Winter Classic on December 31 against the Blues, and they're bringing their absolute best jerseys yet to the ice to celebrate it in front of the fans at Wrigley Field.

These latest jerseys are as good as it gets for Chicago. They carry all the elements that have (rightly and wrongly) made them one of the most iconic looks in hockey history. It's the red jersey with the black and white stripes topped off with the circular logo on the crest. It's similar enough to some of the earliest jerseys from Chicago's history but it's wholly new just the same.

The best Winter Classic jerseys can take a look that resembles the past but make it new and stylish, and that's precisely what this one does. With the game headed back to Chicago, it made all the sense in the world to do just that, especially considering Connor Bedard is leading the way to make what's old (winning Stanley Cups, creating a dynasty) new again.

When the Toronto Maple Leafs hit the ice at Michigan Stadium in 2014, there was no mistaking who they were.

The bluest of blue jerseys with the old-fashioned style Maple Leafs logo on the front capped off with all of those white stripes throughout the jersey made an iconic franchise look the part completely.

Toronto's jerseys were as close to perfect as you can get for any game but especially for a massive event like the Winter Classic, particularly that one which was played in front of the largest crowd in the event's history (more than 105,000 people).

With the Leafs in blue and the Red Wings in, well, red and in a snow globe setting, it goes down as one of the most picturesque games in NHL history. And as good as the Leafs looked on the ice (and heck, they won that game, too), the only team that beat them out on this ranking was the one they faced off against that day.

The 2014 Winter Classic was as good as it gets when it comes to jerseys, and the Detroit Red Wings' throwback-style sweaters were virtually perfect for the event.

The Red Wings jerseys featured their iconic winged wheel logo and "Detroit" written out in an old-fashioned styled script above it. The cream white lettering and stripes mixed with the red made the jerseys look like something from the past, but it was something entirely new for the game.

Watching the Red Wings take on the Maple Leafs in a game that had both teams in colored jerseys made us want to see more of that during the NHL season, but our wishes have yet to come true.

Still, these Red Wings jerseys were and are the best we've seen in the Winter Classic, and we've been yearning for the Winter Classic or Stadium Series or Heritage Classic game to step up and try to take the crown ever since. Until someone does, this is one ranking that's hard to knock the Wings off of the top.