Dear hockey fan,

Please join me in cringing with a general sense of imminent humiliation over NHL Wunderkind commissioner Gary Bettman’s latest attempt to market the game.

According to ESPN, NHL uniforms are soon going to be modernized:

The NHL will break with tradition next season by ushering in a new, streamlined uniform that blends fashion with functionality, commissioner Gary Bettman said Wednesday.

Bettman said the new-look uniforms, designed over the past two years, will be unveiled at the All-Star Game in January.

In an interview with Reuters at the NHL’s headquarters in New York, Bettman said the players who have tested it so far “have been thrilled.”

While the new tapered uniforms are fashionable, Bettman said they were designed with players in mind.

“The new uniform takes advantage of developments in new fabrics,” he said. “But the change was done not for the stylistic. It was done for performance and safety. It was time. Our basic uniforms haven’t changed in 40 years.”

NHL teams have worn basically the same outfit, with big, square shirts, bulky pads and wide socks with horizontal stripes since the 1940s.

The new leg pads are designed to stay in place when a player moves and not ride up toward the waist.

“The players will have the ability to have their joints flex and be able to move their arms and legs better than ever before,” Bettman said.

I’ve been holding out on getting a Canucks jersey until they either get rid of the Orca Bay killer whale or reinstate the retro hockey-stick sweater. But now I have a sudden urge to go grab one before the magic touch of Gary Bettman literaly provides us with a ‘new-look nhl’.