Special Avs event logo revealed, new jersey’s color leaked

The Colorado Avalanche won’t have to wait long to see how the NHL is dressing up their next marquee moment — and a peek at their next alternate sweater is already trickling out, too.

The league rolled out the logo for next season’s Winter Classic in May, the outdoor showcase that will pit the Avalanche against the Utah Mammoth at Rice-Eccles Stadium on the University of Utah campus. While the mark itself has been hailed as one of the best in the event’s history by hockey design site Icethetics, Avs fans hoping for a nod to Colorado in the artwork will come away empty.

The Winter Classic logo leans entirely into Utah’s identity, from the sky blue pulled from the Mammoth’s palette to the snow-capped mountains and a subtle tusk anchoring the “W.” Desert sand and red rock accents round it out, a tribute to the state’s natural landscape. Icethetics ranked the design in its top tier of Winter Classic logos ever produced.

The logo for the @Discover NHL #WinterClassic has arrived! ❄️ pic.twitter.com/WfXKOPXnzV

— NHL (@NHL) May 13, 2026

The Avalanche, expected to be among the Stanley Cup favorites again next season after capturing the 2026 Presidents’ Trophy before getting swept in the Western Conference final, will be making their Winter Classic debut after years of being passed over for the NHL’s signature regular-season event. Their outdoor resume up to now consists of three Stadium Series-style games: a loss to the Detroit Red Wings at Coors Field in 2016, a loss to the Los Angeles Kings at the Air Force Academy in 2020 and a win over the Vegas Golden Knights at Lake Tahoe in 2021 during the pandemic. That makes them 1-2 in outdoor play heading into Salt Lake City.

The year missing from the logo is a nod to the nature of the changing outdoor event. The Winter Classic has traditionally been played on New Year’s Day, with the occasional Jan. 2 contest sprinkled in. But shifting college football schedules have crowded the holiday TV window, pushing the NHL to move its signature outdoor game to New Year’s Eve in some years and Jan. 2 in others.

That has scrambled the naming convention. The league has already played a 2026 Winter Classic — Florida hosted earlier this year — so calling the Utah game the “2026 Winter Classic” would create a conflict. Calling it the “2027 Winter Classic” doesn’t quite work either if it lands on Dec. 31. The result: a logo without a year stamped on it, similar to the approach used at Wrigley Field two seasons ago when Chicago hosted St. Louis on Dec. 31, 2024. The league has also skipped a Winter Classic in a few recent calendar years for the same scheduling reasons.

Colorado’s next alternate uniform is also coming into focus. Icethetics reports the Avalanche will wear white as the base color for their Hometown Remix jersey, part of a new league-wide alternate program from Fanatics that will give all 32 teams an extra sweater for the 2026-27 season. The collection, considered hockey’s answer to MLB’s City Connect and the NBA’s City Edition, is expected to roll out in September.

The Avalanche went white for both of their Reverse Retro releases, and as Icethetics noted, it makes a certain amount of sense for a franchise literally named after snow. Colorado is one of four teams expected to use white as a base, along with the New York Islanders, Dallas Stars and possibly the Montreal Canadiens. Two Hometown Remix designs have already leaked via youth jerseys posted on eBay — a bright pink sweater for the Florida Panthers and a fisherman throwback for the Islanders — but no images of the Avs design have surfaced yet.

Other details from those leaks suggest a few common threads across the collection, including a gray inverted NHL shield on the collar and the name of each team’s hometown stitched inside the back hem.

More leaks are expected as summer goes on, with official reveals likely to follow in September. Until then, Avalanche fans at least know the basics: a white sweater is on the way, and the Winter Classic logo they’ll skate under in Salt Lake City — pretty as it is — belongs to the other guys. For fans the headline here might be, the Avs could wear as many as five sweaters next winter as the league goes back to an 84-game season.

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