Reverse Retro Leak: The Fisherman Jersey is Back, Better Than Before?

NYI Hockey Now had been receiving information throughout the summer and early this season regarding the New York Islanders 2022-23 Reverse Retro jersey.

It was always going to be a Fisherman-inspired jersey with some tweaks to the originals that the Islanders wore in the late 1990s.

After many months, the jersey has arrived as a leak took the internet by storm.

On Wednesday, New York’s 2022-23 Reverse Retro jersey leaked.

Here’s the design, via Daniel Friedman.

(Photo: Daniel Friedman/Twitter)

An NHL source confirmed that this is indeed the jersey.

What do we think?

It was spot on to what we at NYI Hockey Now expected, a revamped Fisherman sweater with no shoulder patches, a different color face, and a lot less teal. The orange pops, and the numbers and waves mimic the original Fisherman’s.

Regardless of how the jersey looks, the generation of Islanders fans who lived through the original Fisherman’s will never be able to rinse their mouth of the devastation it caused back then.

For fans who were around in the late 90s, the Fisherman jerseys broke tradition. It was the first time the York Islanders ditched their historic Islanders logo crested uniforms, the ones that they started with in 1972 and their dynasty.

It was a move by management in 1995 that turned New York into a laughing stock, with the Fisherman on the crest rather very similar to the Gorton’s Fisherman, of the famous fish company.

During those years, the Islanders owned a combined record of 51-91-22 (22 ties). In both seasons, the Islanders finished last in the Atlantic Division.

For the 1997-98 season, the Islanders went back to the Islanders crest but kept the teal at the bottom. A year later, New York dropped the teal and were back to their original uniform look.

The Fisherman jerseys have made an appearance since they were banished to the sun, with the Islanders wearing them for warmups for a game against the Florida Panthers on Feb. 3, 2015.

When the NHL announced that each team would have a Reverse Retro jersey, in partnership with Adidas for the 2019-20 season, there was the belief that the Fisherman jersey would be coming back.

Well, it may not have come back for Adidas’ first set of Reverse Retro drops, but it’s here for the second one.

The expectation is that New York will wear the jerseys six-to-seven times this season, but nothing official has been shared as of yet.