1997-98 University of Minnesota Golden Gophers Erik Rasmussen Jersey

The Curious, Weird and Ugly™ Collection now features a college jersey from the WCHA.

This hideous nightmare of a jersey is a 1997-98 University of Minnesota Alternate Erik Rassmussen jersey.

Designed by then Golden Gophers player Casey Hankinson, and crafted entirely out of "dazzle cloth" by Gemini Athletic Wear, this jersey features the traditional "M" logo, but the similarities between it and the regular Gophers home and away jerseys ends there.

The torso has diagonal black, a very purplish shade of maroon, bright gold and black bands of color, of unequal widths of course. Even weirder is the black extension of the left arm coloring into the upper left chest area. What is the reason for that? It looks like a crude patch sewn to repair some imaginary game worn tear.

The maroon shoulder coloring runs down the top of the sleeves until wrapping around the arms just above the bright yellow cuffs and over the black coloring on the lower part of the arms. It's a grotesque patchwork quilt of lines running this way and that in dark and depressing colors only broken up by jarring flashes of gold - all with a glitzy shine that makes the entire package all the more tacky.

But that's only the front of the jersey. Taking a look at the shoulders gives us the bizarre sight of the severed head of Goldy Gopher smiling away, completely oblivious to the ghastly scene unfolding beneath him.

The tacky, bloated font for the names are italicized for no apparent reason other than to contradict the direction of the diagonal lines leaning the opposite direction on the back of the jersey, and are placed on an ill-advised, italicized(!) dazzle cloth name plate that overlaps into the purple maroon area of the jersey if the name is of sufficient length.

Topping off the whole package is the just plain ridiculous font for the numbers, done in three colors to mimic the "M" on the front. The numbers are an unexplainable combination of calligraphy and the Flintstones, appearing hand-drawn, yet crude at the same time.

The Gophers wore this jersey for only a few games, perhaps even only just once as we have also heard, because the players rightfully thought they were dreadful and no longer wanted to wear them. Replica versions do periodically show up on ebay, but you better have an expert customizer on your side to recreate the name and numbers worn on this one.

We classify this jersey to be "Curious", as in we're curious what the approval process for this trainwreck was really like, "Weird" due to the appalling pattern of the diagonally striped construction of the body and simply terrible font for the numbers, and "Ugly" because it is, without hesitation, the worst looking jersey in the Third String Goalie collection.

It's truly "the perfect storm" of bad ideas poorly executed.

But if you think that the jersey worn on the ice was bad, check out this ad for Gemini that shows an unused prototype variation featruing a giant Goldy Gopher head as the main logo, which takes the entire package to an entirely new farcical level!

If the "Gopher Head" version actually been worn, we can only imagine that they would have been the second ever jersey to be rejected during a game.

1996-97 St. Cloud State Huskies Mark Parrish Jersey

July by the Numbers stops in the midwest for jersey #21.

The conference that would become known as the WCHA was founded in 1951 and underwent a few name changes prior to becoming the Western Collegiate Hockey Association in 1959.

Of the original seven members, Colorado College, Denver, North Dakota, Minnesota and Michigan Tech still remain, although Michigan Tech briefly departed, taking the MacNaughton Cup with them, for three seasons in the early 1980's before returning in 1984.

The league began to expand in 1965 when Minnesota-Duluth was added to the league and Wisconsin followed in 1969. Notre Dame became the tenth member in 1971 and the league remained stable until a dramatic defection in 1981 when founding members Michigan, Michigan State and Michigan Tech plus Notre Dame all departed en masse for the CCHA, leaving the league with just six clubs.

Michigan Tech returned in 1984, as well as the MacNaughton Cup, as it is awarded to the league champion of whichever league Michigan Tech is a member of, and brought Northern Michigan with them, expanding the league to eight teams once more.

Six years later St. Cloud State gained acceptance to the league prior to the league taking in Alaska Anchorage in 1993 to once more reach ten members for the first time since 1980.

1997 saw Northern Michigan return to the CCHA but two seasons later Minnesota State entered the league which began a period of stability, as membership remained the same through the end of 2009-10.

Next season the league will reach an all time high with 12 teams as both Bemidji State and Nebraska-Omaha begin play in the nation's college hockey powerhouse.

To date, 35 national championships have been won by WCHA schools, with the first being the inaugural championship in 1948 by then member Michigan. Colorado College followed in 1950 prior to Michigan reeling off three in a row. After a one year break, WCHA schools reeled off 12 in a row from 1955 to 1966. Michigan (3 championships), Colorado College, Denver (3), North Dakota (2), Michigan Tech (2) and Michigan State all contributed to the league's greatest era of dominance.

Denver won back to back in 1968 and 1969. Wisconsin won their first in 1973 to start a run of ten out of 11 for the conference, with Wisconsin (4) Minnesota (3), Michigan Tech and North Dakota (2) all taking turns.

North Dakota won in 1987 and Wisconsin opened the 1990's with the league's 27th prior to Northern Michigan's first in 1991. The league would wait until 1997 for North Dakota to add another to the ledger and they brought home the WCHA's 30th in 2000.

Beginning in 2002, the league captured five consecutive when Minnesota went back to back in 2002 and 2003, which was matched by Denver in 2004 and 2005, notable as all four participants in the Frozen Four were from the WCHA when Denver, North Dakota, Minnesota and Colorado College all won their regional tournaments that season, before Wisconsin won in 2006 to bring the league up to 35.

The St. Cloud State Huskies program can be traced back to 1932 when the school was known as the St. Cloud Teachers College. The school was renamed St. Cloud State in 1942 and eventually joined the NAIA at the Division II level.

The move up to Division I began in 1986 with the hiring of 1980 Olympic gold medal winning coach Herb Brooks. The team went 17-4-1 and broke or tied 45 school records that season on their way to the NCHA championship. Following the season plans were approved to build the team's new home, the National Hockey Center, which hosted it's first game in December of 1989.

1987-88 saw Brooks depart for the NHL and the team embark on it's first Division I season, making the NCAA playoffs the following season. 1990 saw the Huskies welcomed into the WCHA and they one their first WCHA playoff championship in 2000-01.

St. Cloud State Huskies - 2001 WCHA Playoff Champions

After seven previous bids, St. Cloud won their first NCAA tournament game in 2010 with a 4-3 win over Northern Michigan in double overtime.

With the upgrade in status, the team also began to regularly send it's players on to the NHL. Familiar names to have skated for St. Cloud who have gone on to play in the NHL include Bret Hedican, Matt Cullen, Mark Parrish, Tyler Arnason, Mark Hartigan, Jeff Finger and Ryan Malone.

Today's featured jersey is a 1996-97 St. Cloud State Huskies Mark Parrish jersey. While we recently trashed the Kootenay Ice for slapping their horrid logo on the jersey of the Washington Capitals, the St. Cloud State Huskies have taken a similar approach, but with infinitely more successful results.

Their home white jersey is a virtual copy of the classic Montreal Canadiens jersey, only this time with a clever take on the Canadiens iconic "CH" logo by swapping out the "H" for an "ST". This gives the Huskies an instantly familiar appearing logo that says "hockey" at first glance, but rewards the viewer on closer inspection. Additionally, while the jersey pattern is the same, the Huskies employ red, black and white as team colors, allowing them to avoid the criticism of simply copying the NHL club's jersey stitch for stitch.

Additionally, unlike Kootenay, who copied both Washington's home and road jerseys outright, St. Cloud took a different approach to their road jersey, going in an entirely different direction than Montreal's iconic red jersey with it's blue chest stripe, and created a menacing all black jersey, but still in a simple, classic style.

The lesson here is if you are going to base your jersey on an existing jersey, it's better to start with a timeless classic and add some well thought out tweaks to make it your own, rather than simply copy a faddish jersey template with trendy colors and slap on a poor, amateurish logo.

Today's video segment begins with St. Cloud State's first NCAA tournament victory in team history in March of 2010 in double overtime after seven previous appearances, all of which ended in defeat.

With St. Cloud down by a goal, here is a dramatic goal by the Huskies Ben Hanowski when he scored as time expired. Or did he?

Finally, a look at the National Hockey Center, home of the St. Cloud State Huskies.

2002-03 University of Minnesota Thomas Vanek Jersey

Following the loss of future NHLers leading scorer center Johnny Pohl, second leading scorer center Jeff Taffe and third leading scorer, captain and Hobey Baker Award winner defenseman Jordan Leopold, the defending national champion University of Minnesota Golden Gophers reloaded for 2002-03 with a new offensive weapon, Thomas Vanek.

Vanek, a native of Austria came from the Sioux Falls Stampede of the United States Hockey League, where he led the USHL in goals (46), assists (45) and points (91) in 53 games, outdistancing his nearest competitor by 15 points.

The Gophers opened their defense of their title by defeating Ohio State 7-2 at the Xcel Energy Center in the annual Hall of Fame Game in front of 15,204 fans. Highlights of their regular season included a five game winning streak in December, which included a two-game sweep on the road at rival Wisconsin, and exhibition win over the Italy National Team and winning their annual holiday tournament with wins over Yale and nationally ranked Boston College.

February saw a four game winning streak with a victory at Colorado College, another sweep of Wisconsin, this time at home, and a win up in Duluth over the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Minnesota finished the WCHA regular season with a 15-6-7 conference record (20-2-2 overall), good for second place in the WCHA with future NHL defensemen Paul Martin and Keith Ballard and forward Vanek being named to the All-WCHA Second Team following a 31 goal, 62 point season, which was good for sixth in the nation.

By finishing second in the WCHA, Minnesota hosted ninth place Michigan Tech and advanced to the WCHA Final Five on the basis of a pair of 3-1 and 5-2 wins.

Their next opponent was the Minnesota State Mavericks, who finished with an identical 15-6-7 WCHA record. The Gophers advanced with a narrow 3-2 overtime win in front of 17,012 spectators to meet WCHA regular season champions Colorado College. In the championship game Minnesota prevailed with a 4-2 win to capture the Broadmoor Trophy as WCHA playoff champions.

Five teams were picked that season for the NCAA National Tournament, with Minnesota being named the #1 seed in the West Regional played at their home rink at Mariucci Arena where they would face #4 seed Mercyhurst.

Minnesota advanced with a 9-2 win over the Lakers to face the Ferris State Bulldogs, 5-2 winners over North Dakota. Minnesota extended their winning streak to six games by easily advancing to the Frozen Four in Buffalo, New York by a final score of 7-4.

Their semi-final opponent in Buffalo would be traditional college hockey powerhouse the Michigan Wolverines. Michigan got on the scoreboard first, halfway through the first period on a goal off of a faceoff to take a 1-0 lead. The Wolverines would extend their lead to 2-0 before Vanek would get Minnesota on the board with two minutes remaining in the second period.

A minute and a half into the third period Gino Guyer pulled the Gophers even with a goal from the slot. The remainder of the third period was a tense, close fought battle that settled nothing and the contest went into overtime, where Vanek set Minnesota to their second consecutive national championship game when he came out from behind the Wolverines net after reversing course and put a sharp angle shot through the goaltender to win the game for Minnesota.

Their opponents were Hockey East champions, the New Hampshire Wildcats. Minnesota went out on top at the nine minute mark on a shot from the point by Martin but New Hampshire even the score with less than 20 seconds remaining on a power play goal that was banked in off Minnesota goalie Travis Weber.

The second period was played scoreless, as was the first eight minutes of the third before Vanek took control of the game, first with a nifty play after receiving the puck at the blueline on a three-on-two. Once into the left faceoff circle, Vanek slammed on the brakes, cut to the middle of the ice, losing his defensman in the process. He then drew the goalie out who went down as he cut around him to the right, easily putting the puck into the open net to put the Gophers up 2-1 with 11:46 remaining.

With 8:43 remaining, Vanek split the defense to create a scoring chance which was stopped. Jon Waibel gathered up the rebound and executed a nice give and go with Vanek to create some space and fired the puck in from 15 feet out to extend Minnesota's lead to 3-1 with an assist from Vanek.

Barry Tallackson slammed in a pass from the side of the net on a Gopher power play with 6 1/2 minutes remaining to put the game out of reach at 4-1 and the Gophers added an empty net goal to make the final score 5-1 to take their second consecutive NCAA national championship and Vanek was named the Frozen Four's Most Outstanding Player.

Vanek would subsequently be drafted #5 overall in that spring's NHL Entry Draft and return to Buffalo as a member of the Sabres.

Today's featured jersey is a Mission 2002-03 University of Minnesota Golden Gophers Thomas Vanek jersey. Minnesota had won the national title the year before wearing identical jerseys made by Nike, but changed to Mission jerseys for the 2002-03 season.

This jersey features the 2003 Frozen Four patch worn by all four teams at that year's Frozen Four, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Michigan and Cornell. Minnesota wore their white jerseys for both games in Buffalo.

Today's first video is an excellent recap of the Minnesota Gophers 2003 Frozen Four.

Next up is a great collection of Vanek highlights while he was with the Golden Gophers featuring the outstanding announcing of Frank Mazzocco.