Time for the Arizona Coyotes to make the Kachina uniforms permanent

The Arizona Coyotes have a big problem and it has nothing to do with their on-ice performances, but rather how they look when they are on the ice.

Teams throughout NHL history have had a range of jerseys and uniforms, with several teams flipping between styles and color schemes while others have remained faithful to their origins.

The Coyotes fit into the first category, starting their life in the desert with a truly unique style that matched the history and culture of the area before a drastic color-scheme and logo change before the 2003/04 season.

The brick red, sand, and black colors that the team currently plays in, with the coyote head logo adorning the front of their jerseys, is a nice scheme and is a different take on the other teams around the league with red, white and/or black.

But, while the Coyotes generally look fine with these uniforms, it is their origins that fans, not just of the team but across the league, hope to see make a permanent return.

The famous ‘kachina’ logo and color scheme, which incorporates the black, red, and sand colors, as well as a deep green, is viewed in an extremely positive way across the NHL.

After a 12-year absence, in 2015, the team brought the kachina uniforms back in the form of a ‘heritage’ jersey that was worn in a handful of games over the past two years.

In 2018, with NHL jerseys now being manufactured by Adidas, the Coyotes opted to bring back their original style as their alternates.

During the 2019/20 season, every home game that fell on a Saturday, which incidentally was quite often, the team donned these alternates in favor of their regular home uniforms.

The popularity of these jerseys has even seen the team bow to the public’s opinion, opting to wear them for every home game during the 2019/20 playoffs and play-ins.

Back in 2018, when teams around the league unveiled a range of alternate jerseys, including the Coyotes’ Kachinas, TSN’s BarDown released a video where they discussed every team’s alternates.

The Kachina received universal praise and was voted by the majority as the best design out of the bunch, with some feeling that it was a shame that they were not the team’s permanent home uniforms.

The message seems to be clear across the board: the Arizona Coyotes should finally return to their roots and make the Kachina uniforms their permanent style, re-introducing a white Kachina for road games.

The team itself, whose new owner Alex Meruelo is rumored to be a big fan of the Kachina style, posed the question to fans as to which logo they preferred.

At the time of writing, around 8,800 people selected the Kachina while around 3,100 people went for the current design, with the team’s original style winning out by a vote of almost 3:1.

Fans love the style the team used back in the 90s, during a time when the team was far more competitive and had some big-name players in Keith Tkachuk and Jeremy Roenick.

The team is working towards a positive future but it is time to take a step back and reintroduce an iconic style that is loved across the league and would make the Coyotes truly stand out every time they take to the ice.

The current style could become an option for alternate jerseys, retaining the style while replacing it in favor of a far more popular option.

With the Coyotes beginning to introduce the Kachinas more often, it does feel as if it’s just a matter of time before this becomes reality, but until then, we’ll keep banging the drum in favor of the change.