[Editor’s Note: Our Weekend Editor and Maine resident, Anthony Emerson, takes a look this morning at one of Maine’s professional hockey team’s best alternate uniforms, worn this past weekend. I friggin’ LOVE these, and I think you might too. Enjoy! — PH]
Back on Saturday, the Maine Mariners, ECHL affiliates of the Boston Bruins, wore one-off unis to promote Best Buddies International for their game against the Adirondack Thunder, affiliates of the New Jersey Devils. The jerseys were auctioned off after the game, with a portion of the proceeds going to the Maine chapter of Best Buddies International.
For those who don’t know, Best Buddies International is a nonprofit that matches a person with an intellectual or developmental disability to a buddy without a disability to promote social inclusion of people with disabilities, and also offers job training. It was founded in 1989 by Anthony Kennedy Shriver, a nephew of John F. Kennedy, and has over 1,500 chapters worldwide. Shriver’s mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, had founded the Special Olympics on his third birthday, and had grown up around the organization.
The jerseys have a base with an orange-to-periwinkle gradient in a sort of tie-dye effect, with purple accents. A Best Buddies logo is on the right sleeve, while the Mariners’ green Maine outline alternate logo is on the left. It’s a bit hard to tell in the game photos, but there are also sublimated Best Buddies logos on the jersey base. The purple stripe has the Best Buddies wordmark in a lighter purple.
The socks are orange, purple, and white. The Mariners wore their standard navy breezers and gloves.
This is the penultimate one-off jersey on the Mariners’ calendar (there’s another one coming next week that I’ll write about this weekend). This also another time I’m writing about a Maine sports team — listen, I don’t always plan to write about Maine sports teams. It just so happens we’re apparently living in the halcyon days of Maine sports uniforms.
The Thunder would ultimately win the game 4-3. More photos of the Mariners’ Best Buddies unis are below.
Interesting silver sheen to the socks; a benefit of them being spandex these days as opposed to knitted nylon.
Great looking unis!!!
A cool one-off uni for a worthy cause! I love the story of the Keith Haring-designed Best Buddies logo: link.
Good cause for these uniforms and a great logo by Keith Haring.