Hello everyone, I'm back with my 2nd edition of the official WJC uniform rankings. Although I'm not playing in WJC this season, I'm not going to pass up the opportunity to pass judgment on some uniform creations. WJC is the one of the few chances teams get to display some creativity in LG outside of Esports and I enjoy seeing what people come up with. I will be ranking the home/dark jersey of every team. I took all images from streams of games this week (or if you're Russia, from the DR because I could not find a broadcasted home game), so if quality is low blame the streamer. And with that, we will count it down from 16 to 1. 16th - Kazakhstan *Insert Nick Young confused meme* I don't really know what happened here. In S17 the Kazakh jerseys utilized their flag colors but still had a sun and palm tree as the logo. Does Kazakhstan have a booming beach tourism scene that I'm completely oblivious to? Regardless, automatic placement at the bottom for being the only team to not make custom jerseys. 15th - Slovakia If you asked me which country these jerseys belonged to, Slovakia probably would not have been in my top 3 guesses. The aesthetics of the whole uniform set just aren't very nice either, with the stripes on the shoulder, sleeves, and socks all being different. No logo, no cohesion, no bueno. 14th - Czech Republic 14th might be a little harsh for these jerseys, but they just don't pop to me. This was a decent effort, but the thick blue waist stripe gets lost in the pants and the sock stripe has no correlation to the rest of the jersey. 13th - Slovenia Slovenia is the unique country that goes against their flag colors and utilizes a blue and neon green color scheme. The Slovenian management added an extra shade of blue that frankly just seems to make this uniform not mesh very well together. This also feels like a club that chose their three colors, applied them to the default template, and that was it. The lack of a logo also hurts. 12th - Sweden Oh look, no logo. The jersey itself was executed well, as Sweden has a pretty easy format to replicate and they use this template in virtually every international competition. This would've been higher had a logo been added, and I'm personally not a fan of the default slanted number font as well as a yellow number outlined in white. 11th - Switzerland This was a pretty solid effort by whoever created this uniform. There's a theme of thick white stripes that's consistent throughout the jersey, pants, and socks. The only drawback I have on this is the white piping running up the sides of the jersey that calls back to the early days of Reebok's piping-crazy jerseys circa 2007. 10th - USA This uniform was on its way to being one of the top ones in the tournament, but do we see a theme here? That's right, no logo. I know that some clubs are relatively fresh and don't have a lot of customization options, but at least use one of the default letters as a logo. The horizontal stripe can look good though potentially. 9th - Finland I honestly don't have much to say about these. I always like Finland's color scheme, and that's what we see here. I don't love the gradient sleeves or the sock selection, but overall they're decent. 8th - Russia These are pretty simple but still nice jerseys that Russia is sporting. This feels like a club that doesn't have much unlocked, but they did a good job. 7th - South Korea We see some more gradient sleeves here with South Korea, and I think they pulled it off better than Finland. One of the big improvements is the sleeve numbers being a much better fit. My only gripe would be the pretty random use of a black (I think? This stream was rough) stripe on the sock, but overall it's a solid setup. 6th - Denmark With only red and white in their flag, Denmark doesn't have much to work with, but I think this management group did a pretty good job with what they had. The cohesion between the jersey and socks is nice, the lion logo pops well, and overall this is a nice set. 5th - Norway This is pretty much a carbon copy of what we saw from S17 Norway, but I have no complaints. The real life Norwegian national team often uses a uniform very similar to this, and it's a very easy one to replicate without much unlocked in the game. Similar to Sweden in ease of creation, but this was simply executed better. If I had one improvement to suggest, it would be to outline the logo in blue. 4th - Austria Austria is the champion of the gradient arm jerseys. The eagle logo is a nice touch here given the Austrian flag, and having the gradient lead into the shoulders is a nice transition. The black pants and helmets work well here as well. 3rd - Japan We see the rising sun front and center on this jersey, which is as good of a logo choice as you could make for Japan. There also appears to be a yin and yang logo on the pants...which is a Chinese philosophy so I'm not so sure about its inclusion here. Regardless of that, the jerseys are pretty strong, maybe a little busy with regards to striping but overall they're one of the top sets in this tournament. 2nd - Germany This is cheating a little bit because Germany just has such good colors to work with. However, after last season's Germany thoroughly shit the bed with their uniforms, I'm just happy to see someone take the easy route and make a strong setup. I have two small qualms though, one being the shade of black used on the arm stripes. To paraphrase one of TV's great spies, it looks like the jersey is black, and the stripe is a slightly darker black. The other is if you swap the red and black stripes, you have the German flag right there on your jersey. I get that the black won't show as well in that case, but I hope that striping exists on the white uniform. If you get a chance to create the actual flag on your uniform in an international tournament, you take it. 1st - Canada These are just nice, I could see these being a real uniform that Canada would bust out some day. Heavy on red and black, the stripe through the middle feeding into the Jets logo works so well, and the consistency on the socks relating to the jerseys is pleasing as well. S17 Canada was the worst-dressed and finished last in the tournament, so we'll see if S18 Canada will put up a better performance now that they're visually looking better on the ice.
Just a FYI about Sweden, Sweden was done from scratch with a fresh club. Only so much you can do with such limited options. I'm sure there are a couple other clubs in the same boat.
Yeah I touched on that a bit in the USA section. I get it, but personally I’d rather see at least one of the default letter logos on the front as opposed to it being blank.
How're you going to advertise your 3rd jerseys when you had 3 road games last night? The letdown is real.
Bro u dont know how sad i was to see that once we started playing. Wait for sunday )))))))))))))))))))))
Love this thread, but need to think about all the red vs red going forward in LGWJC can get rather confusing on the ice.
