Lay six old hockey sweatshirts on a table side by side, one from each of the Original Six, and something odd happens. They stop looking like rivals and start looking like a family. The colours are few and plain: black, gold, red, white and two shades of blue. The crests are simple enough to draw from memory. None of them has a cartoon animal, a gradient or a splash of teal. Put them next to almost any team born after 1967 and they look like they come from a different, quieter century, which in a sense they do.
That shared plainness is what makes Original Six clothing such an easy place to start with vintage NHL apparel. Every team in the group has its own post in this journal, so this is not another history of each club. It is about the six as a set: why their gear looks the way it does, how the pieces sit together in one closet, and how to wear a team you love next to a team you are supposed to dislike without anyone noticing the contradiction.
01. Six teams, twenty-five years, one look
The phrase "Original Six" is a little misleading. The NHL had other clubs before the Second World War, and some of them won Stanley Cups. What the name really describes is the stretch from the early 1940s to 1967, when Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Montreal, New York and Toronto were the whole league. For about twenty-five seasons the same six teams played each other over and over, the same faces traded the same grudges, and the identities of those clubs settled into the forms we still recognise.
When the league doubled in size in 1967, the newcomers arrived with fresh ideas about colour and logo design, and the gap between old and new became visible. The Original Six largely kept what they had. A crest from that era was designed to be stitched onto a wool sweater and read from the upper deck. It had to be bold, legible and cheap to reproduce in felt. Those practical limits produced marks that survive every printing method that came after: screen print, tackle twill, embroidery, even a faded iron-on.
For the vintage shopper, this continuity is useful. An Original Six crest on a crewneck from the seventies and one from the late nineties will often look nearly identical, so the logo alone rarely dates a piece. That is frustrating if you are trying to pin down a year and liberating if you simply want something that looks right. You are buying a garment more than a moment.
02. A palette you can actually wear
Look at the colours across the six and you will notice how wardrobe-friendly they are. Toronto is blue and white. Montreal and New York both use red, white and blue in different proportions. Detroit is red and white. Chicago is red and black with flashes of other colours in the crest. Boston is black and gold. There is no purple, no teal, no orange outside a few small accents, and nothing that fights with denim, grey marl or olive.
In practice, that means the six fall into three easy groups for dressing:
- The blues: Toronto and New York. These behave like navy and royal in any wardrobe, which is to say they go with almost everything, especially washed denim and white sneakers.
- The reds: Detroit, Montreal and Chicago. Red is louder, so these do best with black, grey, cream or indigo around them and very little else competing.
- The outlier: Boston. Black and gold reads almost like workwear, and a Bruins piece sits comfortably with brown boots, canvas jackets and khaki.
Once you see the teams this way, you can start choosing pieces the way a stylist would. A red Wings crewneck and a red Habs crewneck are, on the body, more similar than a Wings crewneck and a Wings satin jacket. The garment and the colour decide the outfit. The crest is the signature at the bottom of the letter.
The oldest teams in the league never needed to shout, and their clothes still carry that confidence.
03. Rivalries you can wear on the same day
Hockey fans in Ontario grow up with a clear sense of which teams are allowed in the house. Leafs and Canadiens supporters have been needling each other for generations, Bruins fans have long memories, and the old Detroit and Chicago games had a reputation for bad blood. So it can feel strange to own gear from all six. It is less strange than it looks. Plenty of collectors treat the group as a design archive rather than a set of loyalties, and many casual fans simply like the crests.
If you want to mix teams without it reading as a joke, keep the rivals apart by layer rather than by outfit. A Rangers tee under a plain navy overshirt, with a Bruins toque on top, looks like an outfit with two quiet hockey references, not a fan who cannot decide. What you want to avoid is two big crests at the same height on the body, chest to chest, where the eye compares them.
There is also a gentler approach: commit to one team as your daily colour and let the others visit. A Leafs fan might own three blue-and-white pieces and a single Detroit tee, worn for its red and its winged wheel rather than as a statement. Over time your closet takes on a point of view, and the occasional guest crest adds interest instead of confusion.
04. The garments that suit old crests best
Because these logos were born on knitwear and wool, they tend to look most natural on heavier, simpler garments. A plain crewneck with a large centred crest is the classic, and it is hard to go wrong with one in grey or the team's main colour. The crest has room, the ribbing at the collar and cuffs frames it, and the whole thing looks a little like a practice sweater from an old team photograph.
Other shapes worth knowing:
- Lace-up hockey hoodies and crewnecks: a collar with a short lace placket nods to the old wool sweaters and suits these teams better than most.
- Striped knit toques: the hem stripes of Original Six jerseys translate naturally to winter knits, and a toque is the easiest way to wear a rival quietly.
- Satin and nylon team jackets: loud by nature, but the restrained colours of these clubs keep them wearable.
- Replica jerseys: the sweaters of these teams changed relatively little, so a replica from the eighties or nineties looks close to the current one, which makes it easy to wear without looking dated.
- Simple souvenir tees: a crest and a city name on a soft blank, often worn thin, which is part of the appeal.
Pieces that tend to sit less comfortably with these crests are the busiest nineties designs, where an old logo gets surrounded by lightning bolts or splashed graphics. They have their fans, but the six are at their best when the garment lets the crest breathe.
05. Reading age when the logo never changes
With newer teams, a logo redesign gives you a timeline. With the Original Six, you often have to read the garment instead. Collectors look at a cluster of clues, none of which proves anything on its own. The tag is the first: older licensed sportswear often has a simple woven or printed label, sometimes with a country of origin and a fibre content that hints at the period, while later pieces carry more detailed licensing information. The blank itself, the cut of the body and the shape of the ribbing can add to the picture.
Print and embroidery offer further hints. A screen print that has cracked and softened into the fabric suggests years of washing, while thick, glossy ink on a crisp shirt may be newer. Embroidery from different eras varies in density and thread sheen. Then there are the small details inside the crests: trophies, stars, subtle outline changes or the presence of a secondary mark. These can sometimes help narrow a window, but team logos were reproduced by many licensees with small variations, so treat them as suggestions.
Be relaxed about this. A grey Canadiens crewneck with a lovely fade might be from 1979 or 1995, and it will look just as good either way. If the exact year matters to you, take your time and compare it with pieces you trust. If it does not, buy for the hand of the fabric and the way it sits on your shoulders.
06. Fit across the decades
An Original Six collection usually spans several eras of cutting, and the sizes will not agree with each other. Seventies and early eighties sweatshirts often run short in the body and close at the arm. Late-eighties and nineties fleece goes boxy, with dropped shoulders and plenty of room through the chest. Jerseys sit in their own world, cut to fit over pads, which makes even a medium generous on an ordinary frame.
The fix is to measure rather than trust the tag. Lay your best-fitting sweatshirt flat, measure across the chest from armpit to armpit and from the collar seam to the hem, and use those two numbers when you shop. For jerseys, decide in advance whether you want the traditional loose drape or something closer to a sweater, and size accordingly. A jersey that hangs a few centimetres below your hips over a hoodie is a different garment from one that finishes at the belt over a tee.
Shorter vintage crewnecks have a particular charm with high-rise trousers, where the hem meets the waistband neatly. If you prefer a longer line, layer a plain tee underneath so a strip of white or grey shows at the bottom. That small band of contrast echoes the stripes on the old sweaters and makes the short body look intentional.
07. Building a small Original Six shelf
You do not need all six teams to enjoy them as a group. In fact, the nicest small collections tend to pick two or three and go deep on garment variety: a crewneck, a toque and a tee from one team, a single jacket from another, a cap from a third. The common thread is the restraint of the crests, which lets very different pieces live on one shelf.
If you are shopping our racks at Queen St or Square One, hockey pieces arrive mixed in with everything else, and the six are rarely sorted together. That is part of the fun. You learn to spot a spoked B or a winged wheel from across the room, and you start to notice which colours and garments keep catching your eye. Let that, more than any checklist, decide which teams end up in your rotation.
A few habits keep a mixed shelf looking good. Fold heavy fleece rather than hanging it so the shoulders do not stretch. Store red and white pieces apart from dark ones in the first few washes, in case an older dye still has something to give. Wash crests inside out and dry them flat. These steps are dull, but they are the difference between a collection that improves with wear and one that slowly droops.
08. Six crests, one wardrobe
The Original Six offer something few other groups in sport can: a set of identities so settled and so plainly drawn that they mix almost by default. That makes them the best possible introduction to vintage NHL apparel and a reliable backbone for anyone who already collects. Start with a colour you already wear, add one crest you care about, and then, if you are curious, let a rival in through the side door.
When you next see a faded red crewneck or a black-and-gold toque, look past the loyalty question for a moment. Ask whether the garment fits, whether the fabric feels good, and whether it belongs with the rest of your clothes. If the answer is yes, the crest will take care of itself.
