CCM NHL Heritage Collection of jerseys – Part 2 of 2

Now comes the part where I could really use some help from readers - I am going to try to document the first 35 to 40 jerseys in the CCM Heritage Collection of jerseys. If you have info to augment something I have written below, please share! Or if you have info that calls into question something I have written, let me know (but be gentle folks!).

Keep in mind:

- We know the CCM Heritage Collection began in the fall of 1992.

- We know that in 2002 the NHL dropped the Heritage Collection as an expression designating products that were part of the Heritage Collection line in favour of a new expression - the Vintage Collection.

- We know, or at least we think we know, that 14 jerseys were released in the fall of 1992 - see Part 1 of this blog. I'm going to call this "Generation 1". The 14 jerseys were:

Generation 1

1. Boston Bruins Circa 1928

2. Boston Bruins Circa 1930

3. Chicago Blackhawks Circa 1940

4. Detroit Cougars 1930

5. Montreal Canadiens Circa 1960

6. Montreal Maroons Circa 1930

7. New York Americans Circa 1926

8. New York Americans Circa 1938

9. New York Rangers Circa

10. NHL All Star Circa 1949

11. Philadelphia Quakers Circa 1931

12. St. Louis Eagles Circa 1935

13. Toronto Maple Leafs Circa 1950

14. Toronto St. Pats Circa 1923

- We also know that a 15th jersey, the Montreal Canadiens Circa 1934, was contemplated but never released. In fact, I think it morphed into #16 below - the Montreal Canadiens Circa 1944.

Generation 1.5

- I believe that in the fall of 1993, CCM issued five additional Heritage Collection jerseys. These jerseys had the same three characteristics as Generation 1:

A. These jerseys have the Heritage Collection tag/label prominently displayed in the lower left front portion of the jersey.

B. These jerseys also have a similar Heritage tag/label sewn into the inside of the back of the collar.

C.  These jerseys have Circa 19xx embroidered in the lower left front portion of the jersey - immediately below the Heritage tag/label.

15. Hamilton Tigers Circa 1922

16. Montreal Canadiens Circa 1944
(In some ways this is a re-birth of the non-used 1934 Montreal Canadiens jersey noted above)

17. Montreal Canadiens Circa 1960

18. Oakland Seals Circa 1968

19. Portland Rosebuds Circa 1926

It's interesting to speculate why CCM and NHL Licensing chose these 19 jerseys as their first 19. It's easy to second guess but we won't go down that path. Let's just leave it as interesting to note the 19 that were chosen.

Generation 2

- I believe that in the fall of 1994, CCM (it is no longer CCM Sport Maska, just CCM) issued 12 additional Heritage Collection jerseys. These jerseys only have one of the same three characteristics as Generation 1:

A. These jerseys have the Heritage Collection tag/label prominently displayed in the lower left front portion of the jersey.

B. These jerseys have a different tag/label sewn into the inside of the back of the collar than the Gen 1's - this label has CCM prominently displayed on the viewer's left with the circular NHL Officially Licensed logo on a blue background on the viewer's right - there is no mention of the Heritage Collection on this collar label.

C.  These jerseys do NOT have Circa 19xx embroidered anywhere on the jersey. I have no facts to back this up, but my spider sense tells me that someone at CCM felt that the embroidery was an unnecessary expense that only slowed production, so it was dropped. And read D below - maybe they simply exchanged one expense for another. I would also speculate that fans had questions about the Circa years and CCM might have said "Forget it, let's just drop the embroidered Circa 19xx and then people can't complain that we got it wrong."

D. These jerseys seem to have CCM embroidered on the back right hem in a color that matches the jersey. This embroidered CCM logo was not on the Gen 1 jerseys. Thanks to reader Daniel Beatty for this and other tidbits. Daniel's fun "Hockey Jersey Addicts" Podcast can be found here. 

Note: Five of these 12 jerseys are what I call "re-issues", meaning they are basically the same jersey that was previously introduced except this latest version does not have the Circa 19xx embroidered on it nor does it have a Heritage Collection collar label.

20. Boston Bruins (Re-issue) Circa 1928
- Adjustments were made to the 1928 Bruins logo from Gen 1 to Gen 2.

21. Boston Bruins Circa 1935 (is the year correct?)

22. Chicago Blackhawks (Re-issue) Circa 1940 (is the year correct? One reader thinks 1947 or 1948)

23. Montreal Canadiens Circa 1929

24. Montreal Canadiens (Re-issue) Circa 1960

25. New York Americans (Re-issue) Circa 1926

26. New York Rangers Circa 1927

27. St. Louis Eagles (Re-issue) Circa 1935

- This jersey is an outlier in that it does actually have a Heritage tag/label in the collar, not the blue CCM tag/label that all the others do. But because it does not have a Circa 1935, I have included it in this 2nd Generation. I own this particular jersey so I am confidant as to what elements it does and doesn't have. 

28. Toronto Maple Leafs Circa 1931

29. Toronto Maple Leafs Circa 1955 (is the year correct?)

30. Toronto St. Pats Circa 1926

31. Vancouver Canucks Circa 1970 (is the year correct?)

Now it starts to get shaky, so if you know anything that can help, please share.

Generation 2 or 3?

The following six jerseys may or may not be made by CCM - the best way to tell is to see the collar label, and these photos don't show us the collar labels. If it has this label, then we know it's a CCM Generation 2 (or Generation 3):

You cannot tell who the manufacturer is by the Heritage Collection tag/label on the lower left front of the jersey - that label is not exclusive to CCM, it could also be used by other NHL Heritage Collection licensees such as Ebbets Field Flannels and perhaps Mitchell and Ness. So if you own any of the six jerseys shown below, please have a look at the collar label and send me a photo if you can - ssillcox@rogers.com . I'll give you credit!

32. Boston Bruins Circa 1959

33. Detroit Red Wings Circa 1951

34. Ottawa Senators Circa 1926

35. Seattle Metropolitans Circa 1917

36. Toronto Maple Leafs Circa 1931

37. Vancouver Millionaires Circa 1915

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By the mid 1990's, the NHL had begun adding other Heritage Collection jersey licensees, ie the NHL allowed multiple companies the right to make Heritage Collection jerseys - it was no longer the exclusive purview of CCM. 

The most prolific of these other licensees was Ebbets Field Flannels (EFF) of Seattle. I have reached out to the owner of Ebbets Field, Jerry Cohen, to see if he can tell us how many NHL Heritage jerseys EFF made, what years they made them and exactly what jerseys they made. If I had to guess, I'd say EFF made 50-75 different NHL jerseys from the mid-late 1990's to the early-mid 2000's, but let's see what Jerry has to say.

And in 1998 the great Peter Capolino and his Mitchell & Ness company from Philadelphia entered the NHL throwback jersey market. I think their NHL license expired in 2005-ish.

Another major NHL throwback jersey licensee of note was Toronto's Roger Edwards Sport, a small Canadian company that was purchased by The Hockey Company in 2003, then by Reebok in 2004. In 2008 Roger Edwards Sport by Reebok took over making Vintage Collection jerseys from CCM.

Another major NHL throwback jersey licensee of note was Stall & Dean - a company that has had all sorts of permutations and combinations from Brockton MA to Seattle WA. I believe they went out of business in 2013-ish (their Facebook page seems to have stopped at that point), but here is a great article about Stall & Dean written by Paul Lukas of Uniwatch in 2009.

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By the time 2002 came around and the NHL made the decision to drop the Heritage Collection brand in favour of the Vintage Collection brand, all hell had broken loose in terms of keeping track of how many throwback jerseys had been made, let alone being able to chronicle exactly which ones have been made and by whom. And you have to throw in the counterfeit jerseys being made overseas as an additional wild card in terms of not being able to keep track of who was doing what. Perhaps someone with a lot more staying power than I have can take up the cause of chronicling throwback NHL jerseys from the late 90's to the present.

My purpose in this two-part blog posting was twofold: I wanted to tip my hat to the folks in NHL licensing and to the folks at CCM Sport Maska who way back in 1990 had the foresight to launch the NHL's great throwback jersey undertaking that has literally exploded over the last 30 years. Below please find the names of the people from 1990 who I believe deserve much of the credit:

And my other purpose was that I wanted to identify as accurately as possible the first 30-40 throwback NHL jerseys that came from that collaboration. Here's a visual summary of my first stab at such a list:

Over to you, Mr./Ms. Reader - if you have any info to share, please bring it on!

Thanks -

Scott

CCM NHL Heritage Collection of jerseys – Part 1 of 2

Greetings - 

I am going to write what I think I know about what I call the “CCM NHL Heritage Collection of jerseys”. Please think of this blog posting as a work in progress, and I will update it if/when readers share facts with me that I can more or less verify. So please share info if you have something to share!

I previously wrote a 2010 posting that touched on the subject of the CCM NHL Heritage Collection of jerseys/sweaters, but I have since gathered some more facts and wanted to share what I have learned.

A quick word on sweaters vs jerseys: I’m a bit of a fossil mired in the past and for years I used the word sweater when referring to the outerwear that hockey players wore on their torso. But at some point in time it occurred to me that I was just being a bit of a stick-in-the-mud, and I swung over to calling them jerseys. For this blog posting I was tempted to revert back to using the word “sweater” because in many ways this line of apparel is more sweater than jersey, but I don’t want to be obstinate so I’m going to stick with “jersey”.

In 1990, and perhaps a year or two earlier, the folks in the NHL licensing department made the terrific decision to honour their past by creating a line of reproduction vintage jerseys. I assumed that the collection began under the "Heritage Collection" label. It turns out that wasn’t the initial plan.

In 1990-91, one season prior to the NHL”s 75^th anniversary season, the NHL announced the “NHL Legacy Collection” (see LEGACY ad below) with the tagline “NHL’s Past is in your Future”. This one page “ad” comes from the 1990-91 “Official NHL Merchandise Catalog” and was really the NHL’s way of telling their licensees and their retailers what was coming soon. My guess is this “ad” and the Legacy Collection was planned in 1990 because this catalog would have been published in the fall of 1990. What’s interesting is at this stage the NHL doesn’t say what products are going to be included in this collection – Jerseys? Ballcaps? T-shirts? Sweatshirts? Hardgoods items like coffee mugs?

During the NHL's 75th anniversary season, on occasion some of the Original Six teams actually wore throwback jerseys and as the NHL and you might have guessed, fans loved them. They couldn't buy them, but they loved them.

In 1992, CCM published a brochure called “CCM NHL Heritage Collection” - see below. In my own handwriting you can see I wrote “1993-ish” on page 1, but when I look at the back page, I see that it says 7/92 in the lower right corner, meaning this brochure must have been printed in 1992. This makes sense to me – CCM would have wanted this in the hands of their sales people in the summer of 1992 to get retailers to place orders for the 1992-93 season. So we know with a high degree of certainty that by the summer of 1992, prior to any merchandise being sold to the public, the NHL had changed the name of this collection from the Legacy Collection to the Heritage Collection.

What is especially interesting is that this July 1992 CCM catalogue lists 15 jerseys as being part of the initial launch of the Heritage Collection line.

A. Two of the 15 jerseys shown in the July 1992 catalogue are mislabelled vis a vis the year being depicted – I show the errors and corrections below - ignore my handwritten notes from 20 years ago on the brochure

B. One of the 15 jerseys shown in the July 1992 catalogue was not launched in the fall of 1992 – which means the collection really launched with 14 jerseys. Immediately below have used CCM’s A, B, C lettering so you can follow the brochure if you'd like. Please ignore my handwriting on the brochure which I wrote many years ago – what I hand wrote was not completely accurate – this is more accurate I believe:

A. Toronto Maple Leafs Circa 1950 (the brochure says 1930 but shows an image of 1950)

B. Chicago Blackhawks Circa 1940

C. Boston Bruins Circa 1930

D. New York Rangers Circa 1933 (the brochure says 1926 but shows an image of 1933)

E. Montreal Canadiens Circa 1960

F. St. Louis Eagles Circa 1935

G. NHL All Star Circa 1949

H. Toronto St. Pats Circa 1923

I. Philadelphia Quakers Circa 1931

J. New York Americans Circa 1926

K. Montreal Maroons Circa 1930

L. Boston Bruins Circa 1928

M. Detroit Cougars 1930 (the brochure calls it Detroit Red Wings 1930 but they later amend that to Detroit Cougars 1930)

N. New York Americans Circa 1938

O. Montreal Canadiens Circa 1934 (this was NOT launched in 1992-93)

Factoring out the one jersey that was not initially launched in the fall of 1992 (Montreal Canadiens 1934), I believe the CCM Heritage Collection began in the fall of 1992 with 14 jerseys as follows (in alpha order):

1. Boston Bruins Circa 1928

2. Boston Bruins Circa 1930

3. Chicago Blackhawks Circa 1940

4. Detroit Cougars 1930

5. Montreal Canadiens Circa 1960

6. Montreal Maroons Circa 1930

7. New York Americans Circa 1926

8. New York Americans Circa 1938

9. New York Rangers Circa

10. NHL All Star Circa 1949

11. Philadelphia Quakers Circa 1931

12. St. Louis Eagles Circa 1935

13. Toronto Maple Leafs Circa 1950

14. Toronto St. Pats Circa 1923

The one that did NOT launch in the fall of 1992 was:

1. Montreal Canadiens Circa 1934

I don’t think this jersey was ever made – this makes sense to me because there wasn’t very much difference between the 1960 Montreal Canadiens jersey and the 1934, so CCM likely would have sold half the number of each and thus they likely decided to just go with one. In the case of the Leafs and St. Pats, it is a different situation since the jerseys were so different. The one that I can’t really understand is why they went for two New York Americans – yes they were different designs, but there aren’t many New York American fans to begin with, let alone enough for two Americans jerseys.

The impetus for creating the NHL and CCM launching the Heritage Collection of jerseys in the fall of 1992 was almost certainly the NHL's 75th anniversary season of 1991-92 when each of the NHL's Original Six teams actually wore a throwback jersey on some occasions. This was the NHL's first foray into a 3rd jersey program, but we'll save the topic of third jerseys for another day. I am almost certain none of the other 8 jerseys in this initial 14 jersey collection were actually worn by NHL teams, they were simply made for consumption by the general public beginning in the fall of 1992.

In the grand scheme of things, I applaud the folks from CCM and NHL Licensing at the time because this was pretty leading edge stuff - even as recently as 1992 the leagues (NHL, NFL, MLB, NBA) didn't really honour their past with heritage products, so this was a terrific first effort.

At the same time that CCM was launching their 1992 sales catalogue, the NHL was issuing their own 1992-93 NHL season catalogue under the “Heritage collection” (small C!) banner. See the brochure below, which again I mislabelled in my own handwriting as being 1993 - it is almost certainly fall 1992.

It is interesting to note that by this time (fall 1992), the NHL had signed up seven companies that the NHL authorized to make products under the NHL Heritage Collection brand:

American Needle and Novelty

CCM/Sport Maska

DeLong Sportswear

Mirage Elliot & Kastle

Nutmeg Mills

The Roman Co.

Woody Sports

In the spring of 1993, the NHL published the “Official Licensee and Product Update 1993 Spring/Fall”, basically an updated version of the 1990-91 Merchandise Catalog. I’m not sure why they would have published it in the spring of 1993 since natural sales cycles would suggest that it be published in the fall, but so be it. By the spring of 1993, products bearing the NHL Heritage Collection brand were available for purchase in stores and NHL fans were buying the products. And by this time, the NHL had signed up ten companies who were authorized to make products under the NHL Heritage Collection brand:

American Needle and Novelty

CCM/Sport Maska

CS Crable Sportswear (new)

DeLong Sportswear

Great American Products (new)

Michael Anthony Jewelers (new)

Mirage Elliot & Kastle

Nutmeg Mills

The Roman Co.

Peter David Inc. (new)

-------------------------------

Woody Sports - dropped

But let’s stick with CCM and their jerseys.

In 1992-93, CCM was known as Maska US Inc. in the USA and Sport Maska Inc. in Canada – and the NHL called them CCM/Sport Maska. If you follow hockey and/or CCM and/or NHL licensing, you are likely aware that CCM has had a whole whack of different corporate parent names over the last 30 years. The one more or less constant has been the CCM part of the company/brand name, so when I say this is my little history of the “CCM NHL Heritage Collection of jerseys”, I’m trying to focus on jerseys made by CCM. I will touch on some other non-CCM manufacturers, but my real focus is on the CCM product line.

I believe the jerseys in this collection (ie those made in the 1990’s by CCM) can best be differentiated from later Vintage or Heritage Collection lines by the following:

A. These jerseys seem to have the Heritage tag pictured below both in the back inside collar and lower left front panel/hem of the jersey. Don't get confused by jerseys produced beginning in 2002-ish when the NHL initiated the "V" Vintage program for all NHL throwback products and ceased the Heritage Collection logo - if it's got a "V" logo tag, that's from 2002 onward, not pre-2002.

Heritage Collection lower left front / hem label

Heritage Collection lower left front / hem label (same as above)

Heritage Collection inside collar label - early version

Heritage Collection inside collar label - alternate version

If your jersey has this V for Vintage label either on the hem or inside collar or both, it’s not part of the CCM NHL Heritage Collection of jerseys - the V for Vintage line began in 2002 so anything with a V for Vintage is from 2002 or later:

  

B. My rough take is that in the later years of the CCM NHL Heritage Collection of jerseys (1995 and beyond?), CCM stopped placing the Heritage tag on the lower hem and instead only used it in the collar. I have to guess this was a financial decision and someone at CCM at some point in time thought two tags were an unnecessary expense. Or it’s possible that CCM or the NHL felt that a tag on the hem took away from the look and feel of the jersey so they did away with it. The fact that the later 1990’s Heritage Collection jerseys don’t have a Heritage hem tag doesn’t eliminate them from the collection, but it does somewhat mark the beginning of the end of the line.

C. The early CCM NHL Heritage Collection of jerseys (1992-93 and perhaps a bit beyond) seems to have "Circa 19xx" embroidered in large letters in the lower left front panel/hem. If your jersey does not have Circa 19xx embroidered in big letters in the lower left front of the jersey, I think I can say with a fair degree of confidence that it is not part of the 1992-93 set of jerseys.

So now let’s look at images of the first 14 jerseys released under the CCM Heritage Collection of Jerseys – comparing the brochure photo with actual jerseys people purchased at the time:

[Make a note which of these jerseys was worn in 1991-92 season)

1. Boston Bruins Circa 1928

2. Boston Bruins Circa 1930 (something like this was worn in the NHL's 1991-92 season)

3. Chicago Blackhawks Circa 1940 (something like this was worn in the NHL's 1991-92 season)

4. Detroit Cougars 1930 (something like this was worn in the NHL's 1991-92 season)

5. Montreal Canadiens Circa 1960 (the Habs wore a red version in the 1991-92 season)

6. Montreal Maroons Circa 1930

7. New York Americans Circa 1926

8. New York Americans Circa 1938

9. New York Rangers Circa 1933 (something like this was worn in the NHL's 1991-92 season)

10. NHL All Star Circa 1949

11. Philadelphia Quakers Circa 1931

12. St. Louis Eagles Circa 1935

13. Toronto Maple Leafs Circa 1950 (the Leafs wore a blue version in the 1991-92 season)

14. Toronto St. Pats Circa 1923

And the one that wasn't made or released was the 1934 Montreal Canadiens:

Thanks for sticking with me through all this my friend! We have now documented the first fourteen jerseys in the collection. In Part 2 of this blog posting, we will look at all the other jerseys (that I know of) in the CCM Heritage Collection of jerseys.

Stay well -

Scott