I’m featuring another collared jersey in this post, but like I said in part one of this two-part series, this one has a little more of a story to it. Let’s get to the pictures first.
The first thing that many Avalanche fans will notice is Milan Hejduk’s number that he wore in the 2000 NHL All-Star game held in Toronto. His normal jersey number is 23 when he plays with the Avs and when he played in the 2001 NHL All-Star game in Denver, but in this game he wore jersey number 22. Most of the time in All-Star games the player with the most career goals gets his jersey number when two players wear the same number during the regular season. The player with less career goals then chooses a new jersey number for the game. That wasn’t the case here. Hejduk’s fellow countryman Peter Svoboda wore number 23 for the 2000 All-Star game. Svoboda was the first Czech player to ever play 1,000 games in the NHL and only had 58 career goals as he was a defenseman, but he obviously had the respect of a particular young Avalanche forward and was allowed to wear his customary 23 for the game. A classy move by Hejduk, but that’s what we’ve come to expect as Avalanche fans through the years.
There are also a few differences between the 2000 and 2001 All-Star jerseys. The basic design is obviously the same at first glance, but there are a couple of details that make them different. One is the back right tail of the jerseys. The 2001 only has the black and silver NHL shield there, the 2000 jersey looks like this:
CCM moved their logo to the back of the neck of NHL jerseys before the start of the 2000-2001 season. I’m not exactly sure why CCM chose the move from one year to the next, but I’m sure marketing and emblem visibility had something to do with it.
Another difference is the All-Star patches. The 2001 patch is very familiar to all of us Avalanche fans. The 2000 jersey patches looked like this:
The patch on the top was worn by the Toronto Maple Leafs on their jerseys all season long and the NHL 2000 patch was worn by every team in the league during the 1999-2000 season. For example, here’s a Chris Dingman white game worn jersey from that season:
And here’s a burgundy authentic that I had made into a Chris Drury.
The last thing I’d want is for Avs fans to forget what the Avalanche jerseys looked like that season as we all have short memories. Plus, as I’m sure you guys have noticed, I’ll take any chance I get to post a jersey that’s in my collection on the blog. That’s kind of the point, right?
So that’s the end of the collared jerseys in my collection. They don’t come around too often, and I know many of you are thanking me for that. Either way, these jerseys are definitely unique in their own way and are attention-getters at games due to their color and style. Ask any collector about people asking you about your jerseys while you’re wearing them; that’s never a bad thing.