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Blog: Are these Team Canada's new Olympic jerseys? Do they have to be?

A Redditor (JustaCanuck88) posted a photo of three Red, White, and Black/Gold jerseys, sparking national debate (and fury).
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A photo of these presumed Canada 2014 jerseys was posted to Reddit on Tuesday.

Thank the Lord, or whoever you look up at, for Reddit. Without the user-created front page of the Internet, we would have had to wait until October 8 to be thoroughly disappointed. Let down. Just plain put to sleep by these three Canadian jerseys, which have made their rounds as the assumed Red, White, and Black/Gold (?) tunics for Sochi 2014's defending Olympic champions.

(*Photos were posted by Reddit user justacanuck88 to Reddit Hockey.)

Response hasn't been kind. The red one was "leaked" some time ago, after a photo of Jonathan Toews wearing the blanket was shared by Getty Images. Then, a black with yellow stripes was passed around and panned.

As of now, that one's looking like a beauty.

The white jersey in the middle – which would be the 'Away' jersey – is simply a photo negative of the red.

The black, however, is inexcusable. How do shirts like this one – and, let's be clear, it's a shirt, not a jersey – ever get the thumb's up? Who signs off on this? The same guys who signed off on this? Was it a multiple choice contest? Does anyone have any control of this process whatsoever?

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*Can you imagine this moment happening in any of these awful garbs?

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I'm puzzled right now in the same way I was puzzled when I watched Sweet November... How does this ever get made? How does it get written? How does it get approved?

There is a lot of money in this world thrown after bad, but it's fair to say AIG and Lehman Brothers made better investments in 2007 than Nike or Hockey Canada has in this jersey. At least in the financial meltdown, a few folks got richer.

We're left perplexed whenever these long-awaited designs are released, when it seems like every manufacturer is constantly trying to push the envelope even when they they're consistently regressing. They all want to become the new Seattle Seahawks, or the professional Oregon Ducks (those beautiful ensembles are from Nike, by the way), and yet so many of them end like Ralph Lauren's 2012 Team USA outfits or the shoes with the wings that Orlando Bloom was fired for in Elizabethtown.

Boredom.

That's really the only way to describe that third jersey. (It's also the only way to describe the other two, but those look a lot better lined up next to that runt on the right.)

Oh, and if you were wondering what that red and gold arm band reminded you of, it's already being referred to as "Nasi-esque"...