Fanatics’ newest collaboration with the NHL is a collection of 32 custom jerseys that use font, color, and symbolism to pay homage to the history of each team’s home city.
The collection, called Hometown Remix, is a leaguewide special edition uniform, apparel, and headwear program designed in-house by the global sports platform Fanatics. It includes a bespoke jersey for each NHL team that will be worn at multiple points throughout the season, as well as a matching line of fan gear.
Every jersey was made through a series of workshops between Fanatics and the team to land on a look that represents each club’s local culture. The first jerseys will hit the ice when the Florida Panthers, Chicago Blackhawks, and San Jose Sharks play on November 2, and the fan apparel is available now across the Fanatics network of sites and in team stores.
Since becoming the NHL’s on-ice uniform partner in 2024, Fanatics has designed several special edition uniforms for marquee events like the 4 Nations Face-Off and NHL Winter Classic. With Hometown Remix, though, the brand is making its first foray into a leaguewide jersey program—and its strategy demonstrates how Fanatics and the NHL are using design to drum up anticipation throughout the season.
How leaguewide custom jerseys took off
For devoted NHL fans, the concept of a leaguewide jersey program isn’t new. The league first tried something similar back in 2020, when it launched a jersey line called Reverse Retro in partnership with its then-official outfitter, Adidas. The program created uniforms for each club inspired by a specific era in its history, but with a modern spin. It was so successful that, in 2022, Adidas brought the concept back—this time, to a surge of fan theories and mock-ups.
At the time, Dan Near, senior director at Adidas hockey, told ESPN, “We’re excited about the speculation. I think if you look back at the first time we launched in 2020, it came out of nowhere. Nobody knew what it was.” The jersey launch created its own cult following of NHL devotees, and, clearly, the NHL immediately recognized it as an ongoing marketing opportunity.
“When we partnered up with the NHL, there was always a conversation around, ‘Is there going to be a leaguewide initiative? Is that something that Fanatics can bring to the table?’” says Dom Fillion, vice president of creative design and innovation at Fanatics. “We certainly heard about it from fans on socials and in conversation as well.”
In 2024, Fillion’s team sent out a series of surveys to fans to gauge their interest in a leaguewide program, and got a resounding “yes.” Once Fanatics had committed to taking on the challenge, the next hurdle was deciding on a central theme. It had to be scalable across all 32 teams while also allowing each club to take ownership of its own design.
“We didn’t necessarily want to create a platform that was only looking backward and telling old stories, but really allowing this platform to create something new,” Fillion explains. “This is how Hometown Remix came to life—it connects the team, the city, and the fans together and gives opportunities for a team to tell stories that they haven’t had the opportunity to do so at that scale.”
Fans follow the breadcrumbs
On social media, teams have spent the weeks leading up to the launch playing into speculation by dropping hints to their fandoms. Every team posted their own version of a Hometown Remix-themed riddle for fans to solve. The Florida Panthers posted a color swatch from their jersey; the Seattle Kraken made a teaser video with all of the design details obscured; and the Edmonton Oilers dropped a moody trailer ahead of the launch.
The Boston Bruins have taken the program one step further and invented an entire fake college, Causeway University, to play off of their jersey’s collegiate theme. Andrea Mazzarelli, vice president of marketing for the Bruins, says the campaign includes Causeway-themed posts on socials, an elaborate fake website, and, alongside the jersey drop, a “college orientation” event for fans.
“We didn’t connect [Causeway University] overtly to Hometown Remix with our launch, but there are some people who are already figuring it out based on rumors going around,” Mazzarelli says. “That’s what’s made it so fun and so cryptic, is that people are waiting for more.”
Across the league, the breadcrumbs are having their intended effect. Fans have created YouTube videos dissecting the roll-out and made Reels comparing the content across teams. By turning the launch into a cat-and-mouse game with fans, Fanatics and the NHL have manufactured the exact kind of fan dialogue that they need to turn Hometown Remix into a hit as soon as it debuts.
How Fanatics designed 32 city-inspired jerseys
To create each jersey, Fanatics went back and forth with all 32 teams to discuss color schemes, fonts, team identity, the storytelling behind the design, and potential easter eggs to include for fans. Making every design successful, Fillion says, required identifying every club’s “secret sauce”—or the special points of connection that they’ve built with their individual fandoms.
“We went in with individual lanes on, ‘Hey, this could be concept one, two, and three,’ allowing different creative perspectives on how that hyperlocal narrative could come to life and the marks and the colors,” Fillion says. From there, he adds, each team either selected a preferred design and offered additional input, or suggested an entirely new direction. “They know their fans best. They work with these fans every single day at a granular level,” he says.
With the Bruins, for example, Fillion’s designers brought the team concepts based on the city’s nautical culture and the Boston Tea Party. Ultimately, though, the team opted for a look to honor its collegiate history. The brown and yellow uniform nods to the Bruins’ first season in 1924, marking the first time that the team has worn a brown kit in nearly 100 years. Other details, like the blocky serif wordmark, shield on the shoulder patch, split-color design, and classic striping on the sleeve mimic traditional campus wear. As an added easter egg for locals, a brick pattern on the hem resembles Boston’s Freedom Trail, a 2.5-mile historic walking trail in the city.
A similar level of detail appears across the full collection. Filigree detailing on the Nashville Predators’ uniform echoes the city’s country stagewear; the Los Angeles Kings’ look uses a Hollywood-inspired serif font; and the St. Louis Blues get a debossed wave pattern on the sleeves to evoke the Mississippi River.
As the jerseys start appearing on ice, Fillion says, an “entire suite of marketing content” will accompany them to give viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the design and to point out some of the more subtle, city-specific details. The whole launch is designed to make fans feel like they’re part of something exclusive.
“This is, to me, a great example of the power and the influence of the Fanatics brand,” Fillion says.