Fanatics and NHL Bet 32 City-Themed Jerseys on Cryptic Hype

Fanatics has designed 32 bespoke NHL jerseys — one for every team — that hit the ice for the first time on November 2, when the Florida Panthers, Chicago Blackhawks, and San Jose Sharks wear them in games. The collection, called Hometown Remix, marks Fanatics' first leaguewide jersey program since becoming the NHL's on-ice uniform partner in 2024, and the matching fan apparel line is already on sale across Fanatics' sites and team stores.

The playbook here is borrowed from a proven hit. The NHL first ran a leaguewide concept in 2020 with Adidas, the Reverse Retro line of era-inspired uniforms. It worked so well that Adidas revived it in 2022 — and this time fans generated their own theories and mock-ups before launch. Dan Near, then senior director at Adidas hockey, told ESPN at the time: "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 league recognized a repeatable marketing engine when it saw one.

What did Fanatics change this time?

Dom Fillion, vice president of creative design and innovation at Fanatics, says the leaguewide question came up early. "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?'" he says. "We certainly heard about it from fans on socials and in conversation as well."

In 2024, Fillion's team ran fan surveys to test demand for a leaguewide program and got a resounding yes. The harder problem was the theme: it had to scale across 32 clubs while letting each team own its design. Fanatics deliberately avoided nostalgia as the organizing idea. "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."

Each jersey came out of workshops between Fanatics and the club covering color schemes, fonts, team identity, storytelling, and hidden easter eggs. Fillion describes the approach as identifying each club's "secret sauce" — the points of connection each team has built with its own fanbase. "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," he says. Teams then picked a direction or proposed a new one. "They know their fans best. They work with these fans every single day at a granular level."

How cryptic marketing built the buzz

Teams spent the weeks before launch feeding speculation on social media. Every club posted a Hometown Remix-themed riddle. The Panthers released a color swatch from their jersey; the Seattle Kraken published a teaser video with design details obscured; the Edmonton Oilers dropped a moody trailer. Fans responded with YouTube videos dissecting the rollout and Instagram Reels comparing the teasers across teams.

The Boston Bruins went furthest, inventing a fake college — Causeway University — to match their jersey's collegiate theme. The campaign includes themed social posts, an elaborate fake website, and a "college orientation" event timed to the jersey drop. "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," says Andrea Mazzarelli, vice president of marketing for the Bruins. "That's what's made it so fun and so cryptic, is that people are waiting for more."

The details doing the selling

The Boston design shows how deep the localization goes. Fanatics first pitched concepts built on the city's nautical culture and the Boston Tea Party; the Bruins instead chose a brown-and-yellow kit honoring their collegiate roots, nodding to their first season in 1924 — the first brown uniform the team has worn in nearly 100 years. A brick pattern on the hem echoes the Freedom Trail, Boston's 2.5-mile historic walking route.

The rest of the collection follows suit. Nashville Predators filigree detailing references the city's country stagewear; the Los Angeles Kings use a Hollywood-inspired serif font; the St. Louis Blues carry a debossed wave pattern evoking the Mississippi River. As the jerseys appear in games at multiple points this season, Fanatics plans an "entire suite of marketing content" giving behind-the-scenes looks at the designs and surfacing the subtler city-specific details.

For Fanatics, the program doubles as proof of what its design operation can deliver league-wide. "This is, to me, a great example of the power and the influence of the Fanatics brand," Fillion says. If Hometown Remix sells the way Reverse Retro did, expect the guessing game to return every season.