The Most Frequently Screwed Up Jersey of All Time™

In anticipation of his retirement, which has not been formally announced yet, Mike Modano was named the #1 star of the game last night in Minnesota, where his career began, and surprised everyone by coming out wearing a Minnesota North Stars jersey.

And predictably, it was customized wrong, with the numbers lacking the proper drop shadow, the black outline being a separate layer of twill, rather than just black zig-zag stitching, confirming our previous declaration that the Minnesota North Stars Mike Modano jersey is The Most Frequently Screwed Up Jersey of All Time™.

Utterly maddening, the CCM 1989-90 Minnesota North Stars Mike Modano jerseys that permeate the hobby are incorrectly customized over 90% of the time. We don't know what idiot originally screwed up the customizing for this jersey, but once it was customized wrong by CCM, it apparently became The Gospel Truth.

Take a look at it. Notice the drop shadow, the key word here being "drop", on the N crest on the front goes down and to the right, but the "drop shadow" on the number goes... up and to the left! What they have done here is located the top white layer of the "9" in the bottom left corner of the yellow layer of twill, instead of the upper right as it should be.

The effect can also be described as a "6" being sewn on upside down, because if you rotate the number 180º, it becomes a 6 with the drop shadow correctly oriented down and away from the white layer. How hard was it to get that right when every photo of the North Stars jerseys from this era has the same treatment and there's a big, fat clue as to how it should look right there on the front of the jersey!

While we're at it, notice the star on top of the N. It's backwards! It should lean to the right, following the same trajectory as the arrow part of the N below it. Later production runs of this jersey did have the star corrected, but I've never seen a factory customized jersey ever have the proper style number on the back and sleeves. Why they could fix the specs for the crest but never the numbers is beyond us.

As further proof of our claim of this being The Most Frequently Screwed Up Jersey of All Time™, we present to you the McFarlane's Sports Picks NHL Series 10 Mike Modano Minnesota North Stars figurine.

Even on the front of the packaging you can once more see that the "drop shadow" on the "N" logo goes down and to the right, while on the "9" it once more goes up and to the left. Of course, the "9" on the back of the figurine follows the mistaken CCM placement of the white number within the yellow trim as well.

Here's a challenge for you. Search for "Modano North Stars Jersey" on ebay any time you want. Go ahead. We promise you that 19 out of 20 will be wrong. Guaranteed.

The Mike Modano North Stars jersey. Easily The Most Frequently Screwed Up Jersey of All Time™.

Now, if you want to stand out from the masses and have your jersey done properly by someone who understands how an accurate Minnesota North Stars jersey is supposed to be done, with a proper drop shadow and two colors of twill with black stitching used to create the third color, we recommend VintageMinnesotaHockey.com.

For a look at how it was and should be, here is footage of Mike Modano being selected first overall in the 1988 NHL Entry Draft and being presented with a proper North Stars jersey, followed by a correctly customized North Stars jersey. Notice how narrow the black outline is? That is the effect of the use of black thread to affix the white layer to the yellow layer of twill, not a third layer of black twill in between the white and yellow layers.