The story is here, courtesy of Icethetics. (Scroll dooooooown.)

Apparently Ottawa won’t wear its off-white version of the heritage jersey in the 2014-2015 season. The word “retire” was even used. I think they wore it twice: during the heritage classic and once more, against Montreal.

As much as this summer has been an Ottawa sports pessimists’ wet dream due to financial issues, the departure of Jason Spezza, and the return of losing football to the capital, this – and I don’t want to seem hysterical here – is the worst thing since the Great Depression.

Why? I don’t need to tell you that Ottawa’s jerseys have had a propensity to suck. They’ve sucked for years. Other than the original jersey…

Player: unknown

…Ottawa hasn’t had a jersey you could be remotely excited about. It’s been on an Atlanta Thrashers level of quality, really. Check out Chet Sellers’ Summer of Disappointment post for Puck Daddy for all of the morbid details pertaining to the Senagoth / Starfleet uniform.

The 3D redesign isn’t horrible, I guess, so much as generic, and cheesy, and antiseptic, and soulless and aaaaarggh it’s horrible it’s so horrible. We’re not even getting into SNES with flying squirrel armpits. Man, our jerseys have been teeeeeerible. The team could have gone shirtless like the gladiator with mic problems and it would have been an improvement.

So it was with some excitement that Ottawa went from having, hands down, one of the stupidest uniforms in the league to….maybe, one of the best? Top ten at least? Maybe even top five if you eliminate original six bias? (C’mon the Habs are a C with an H in it. Boston is a B.)

The black heritage jersey was so good that we all took it for granted that eventually a white one would be introduced. And then the white one was so good we all took it for granted that they’d be our new primary jerseys, and our third jersey could be, you know, whatever who cares. (If there’s a god they bring back those originals, though they be cursed with a pirate curse.)

So it is equally surprising to hear…no? We’re going to head into the season with, yet again, the 3D SenHead? I know the NHL’s policy on new uniforms is fairly draconian and requires much synergistic coordination, so let’s hope this decision has more to do with timing and less to do with introducing yet another jersey.

Because I think we can all agree that if the Senators’ marketing department plans on introducing yet another jersey, that there is greater potential for yet another overdesigned, cartoonish, What Dads Think Their Kids Think Might Be Cool jersey than there is yet another knock-it-out-of-the-park good design.

Dudes: you’re sitting on gold here. You did it. You got to the finish line. You introduced jerseys that absolutely everyone – EVERYONE – likes. Just wear them!