Panthers, Stars both wear white in NHL fashion faux pas

On Sunday night, the Florida Panthers hosted the Dallas Stars in an NHL preseason game. Well, sorta: The game was in London, Ontario, and the Panthers were designated the home team, which meant they were the ones that traditionally would wear their colorful “home” sweaters.

Except they showed up to the game in their white road sweaters. As did the “road” team, the Stars, who wore their white jerseys.

Here’s what the exhibition game that launched a thousand “after Labor Day!” jokes looked like:

So confusing! Literally the only way you could tell which teammate you were passing to was by the completely distinct color scheme on the jerseys!

So how did this happen? George Richards of the Miami Herald has the skinny:

Apparently the Panthers thought Dallas was bringing its home sweaters since the two teams meet again Tuesday in Texas. It only made sense for Florida to bring one set of jerseys on this road trip. Dallas, however, was originally listed as the road team for Sunday’s game and brought its road jerseys.

Now, for the record, here’s what the NHL rulebook says on teams and jerseys:

Each member Club shall design and wear distinctive and contrasting uniforms for their home and road games, no parts of which shall be interchangeable except the pants.

A team typically wears for its colorful solid jerseys for home games, by edict of the NHL. But it can wear white on certain occasions – heritage nights, special third jersey nights, Diddy’s annual Hamptons party – while the road team wears its solid colored jersey. Like when the Vancouver Canucks wore these sweaters against the Los Angeles Kings, for example.

OBVIOUSLY the Panthers were trying to commemorate this once-in-lifetime chance to see a team from Florida play a team from Texas in Ontario by wearing their road jerseys, and thus the onus was on Dallas to wear their home jerseys for contrast. Or something.

If nothing else, this fashion faux pas finally does confirm that hockey could actually be whiter than it already is…

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Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.