The Penguins will play in their sixth outdoor game on Monday, tying the Blackhawks for the most ever by any team in the NHL.
They've worn some pretty cool jerseys in the first five games, but these jerseys for Monday's game against the Bruins at Fenway Park undoubtedly have best backstory of them all.
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The sweaters are inspired by the Pittsburgh Pirates -- not the baseball team, but rather Pittsburgh's first NHL team that played out of the Duquesne Garden from 1925-30.
The 1925-26 season was the NHL's ninth year, and the league expanded from six to seven teams -- the Hamilton Tigers folded and the New York Americans joined the league that September. Pittsburgh was granted a franchise at the annual league meetings that November, becoming the NHL's third team based in the United States.
Putting an NHL team in Pittsburgh was a strategic move. Eddie Livingstone, the owner of the National Hockey Association's Toronto Shamrocks and Toronto Blueshirts, was attempting to create a new league that would rival the NHL, and saw Pittsburgh as possible city for a team in his league. The NHL wanted to ensure that it put roots in Pittsburgh first.
The expansion Pirates were largely a cast of ex-amateur players from the former Pittsburgh Yellow Jackets amateur team and included future Hall of Famers in 5-foot-3 goaltender Roy "Shrimp" Worters and the team captain, defenseman Lionel Conacher. The Pirates played their first game on Nov. 26, 1925 in Boston, and Conacher scored the franchise' first goal in a 2-1 win over the Bruins. The Pirates would go on to finish third in the league that year with a 19-16-1 record.
The Pirates relocated to Philadelphia and became the Quakers after the 1929-30 season due to financial problems. The 5,000-seat Duquesne Garden was one of the league's smaller buildings, and the Pirates couldn't bring in the gate revenue needed to keep the team afloat. The move to Philadelphia was initially meant to be temporary as a new arena was built in Pittsburgh, but the arena was never built and the Quakers folded after one season.
The state of Pennsylvania would be without an NHL team for another 36 years, when both the Penguins and Flyers were admitted into the NHL as part of the 1967 expansion.
The Penguins came into the league wearing blue sweaters -- general manager Jack Riley was the one to choose the colors, and drew inspiration from the junior Toronto St. Michael's Majors. The Penguins wore a number of different jerseys over the years with the blue color scheme until January of 1980, when they switched from blue to black and gold mid-season. The Pirates and Steelers had just won the World Series and Super Bowl respectively, and the switch to black and gold more closely aligned the Penguins with the two champions across town. The Steelers had worn black and gold since the team's inception in 1933, and the Pirates had changed to wearing black and gold in 1948. Black and gold, of course, are the colors of Pittsburgh's flag and are in the city's coat of arms.
"A change to black and gold is in our plans,” Penguins team vice president Paul Martha told the Pittsburgh Press of the impending change that year. "Exactly when it is yet to be determined, but it will be this year. Black and gold has become Pittsburgh. And the Penguins are Pittsburgh. I think it’s a simple equation and a decision that’s easy to make."
"I think it's important to do something our fans will approve of," Penguins leading scorer Greg Malone told United Press International of the switch. "They've expressed an interest in changing to black and gold. I think everybody in Pittsburgh identifies with those colors, so why shouldn't the Penguins identify with them, too?"
Boston general manager and head coach Harry Sinden and the Bruins disagreed, though. They thought black and gold belonged to Boston.
"There’s no way we’re giving permission for them to adopt our colors. Those colors are part of our tradition and heritage. We’re going to fight it if Pittsburgh tries to do it," Sinden told the Boston Globe. "I sent a telegram to our league president (John Ziegler), telling him we feel we have exclusive rights to those colors in our league and we were not going to give the Penguins permission to change.”
For what it's worth, there was some response in the Boston area that recognized that Sinden was being a little ridiculous. I found this take in a Jan. 1980 copy of the Bridgewater State University student paper and thought it was pretty funny.
"Hey, Harry what's the problem here?," wrote one student. "Do you have a copyright or patent on these colors? This really sounds rather silly, but what do you expect from a full·grown, mature man. What I fear is that I may not be able to wear my black and gold lined disco-suit next time I step out on the town, I'II have to call and ask Mr. Sinden for his permission. Seriously, even though the Penguins surely cannot match the Steelers or Pirates in talent, they should be able to wear any color that they desire to."
The Penguins' response to Sinden and the Bruins was to cite the history of the old Pirates team. How could the Bruins have "exclusive rights to those colors" in the NHL when it was a Pittsburgh team who wore black and gold in the NHL first?
“Boston officials have expressed their position in this matter," Martha told the Pittsburgh Press in the days after Boston filed the complaint with the league. "They claim they have been wearing black and gold uniforms since their inception in the NHL in the 1920s. But I have documented proof that the old Pittsburgh Pirates wore black and gold uniforms and at that same time Boston was wearing brown and yellow, before they changed in 1933.”
Ziegler sided with the Penguins and upheld their request to switch to wearing black and gold. The Penguins ordered their new black and gold sweaters from a sporting goods store based in Boston, and had initially intended on debuting their new uniforms during a home-and-home series against the Bruins in late January. A convenient manufacturing delay pushed the Penguins' black and gold debut to Jan. 30 against the Blues, however.
Sinden told the Boston Globe in 2013 that the Penguins' switch to black and gold was "one of the most depressing days in my time here."
“I protested like hell over it because we’d had those colors for 60 years," Sinden said. "We were the only team in the league with those colors, and it was a real identity for us. John Ziegler was the president of the league and he had his chief counselor, Gil Stein, research it. They came back and said that the Bruins’ original colors were brown and yellow. I think they weren’t quite black for a year or two in those old pictures."
Sinden still pushed back nonetheless.
"No matter how much I protested, it fell on deaf ears," Sinden said. "I had a jersey made up with our uniform and the Bruins logo all made up in the Detroit Red Wings colors. I was going to bring it to the NHL Board of Directors and ask if I could change our uniforms to the same colors as the Red Wings. But they were already mad at me and I didn’t have the guts to bring it out."
With the Penguins returning to Boston for the Winter Classic, there's no better way to pay tribute to Pittsburgh' original NHL team than to wear Pirates-inspired sweaters. It was in Boston where the Pirates played their first game and got their first win, and it's a perfect full-circle moment to wear those jerseys against the Bruins, after it was the Pirates' existence that squashed the protests of the Bruins. Without the Pirates, the Penguins might not be able to wear black and gold today.
