Purple Reign – Saturday’s game versus Detroit is all about the purple for the LA Kings

It’s a Purple Haze in La La Land tomorrow evening, Insiders.

First and foremost, it’s Hockey Fights Cancer Night as the Kings host the Detroit Red Wings. As a part of a leaguewide initiative that has raised more than $32 million since its inception, the Kings and the NHL will recognize all who have had their lives afflicted by cancer. The Kings and Kings Care Foundation will hold their night tomorrow evening, with specialty warmup jerseys before the game and survivors, as well as those currently impacted and those who have been lost, honored throughout the evening.

Kings Vice President of Marketing & Creative, Andrea Murphy, who is currently battling cancer, told her story on LAKings.com.

The white and purple warmup jerseys will match the rest of the gear as well, with the Kings also set to debut their reverse retro jerseys during tomorrow evening’s game.

For the first time this season, we’ll see the return of forum blue and gold. For the first time ever, we’ll see those colors with a white base, as the Kings debut their latest addition to the jersey family, with homage to the Miracle On Manchester. Teams have begun to debut their own reverse retro sweaters over the last set of games around the league and tomorrow will be the first of five games this season the Kings will wear them, the first of three in Los Angeles.

Initial reactions from those who will don the uniforms in game action have been quite positive.

The Kings have practiced and taken morning skates in their new gear throughout the week. The forwards are typically split into gray and white jerseys, with the defensemen typically wearing black. This week, however, it’s been gold and white up from and purple on the backend, with purple pants and gloves to match.

Thanks to an assist from Jesse Cohen of the All The Kings Men Podcast, we’ve got reactions from several Kings on their new threads in advance of tomorrow’s game.

Phillip Danault – I can’t wait to wear it, it looks awesome. Honestly, it’s an honor to wear it, it was a good idea. I want to keep this one and frame it in my house one day, there’s a lot of history in this jersey, I like it. It’s always fun to wear different jerseys.

Viktor Arvidsson – I think they look cool. Different colors and I’ve never played in this many jerseys in my career, but it’s fun and it’s different. I think ours are looking really dope with the purple and the white, I think that goes really well together with that crown. It’s good.

Blake Lizotte – I love it, I think it’s probably our best one so far, in my opinion. With the Kings, I think the old-school jerseys are the best, I like the old purple with the classic crown logo. I’m a sucker for any jerseys with a classic look and I think our jerseys stand up pretty well against the rest of the league.

Trevor Moore – I think they’re sick, even the practice jerseys are really cool, it’s fun being out there and seeing a different look. It’s old school, it’s cool, sweet jerseys. It’s cool too that it’s the same as the Lakers color scheme, I like it when cities do that and match them all together.

Sean Durzi – Pretty cool. You see us practicing in some of the gear and it’s awesome, it’s exciting honestly to wear that purple again, plus it’s my mom’s favorite color so she’ll be pumped to get one of these. As soon as I’m able to get one I will and her excitement is my excitement.

As far as how the jersey came to be made, that’s another story in itself.

Kings President Luc Robitaille explained the process when he joined the team podcast earlier this season.

The second Reverse Retro line has seemingly been in the works since the first one debuted. A success for many teams around the NHL, having a part two seemed natural and felt like only a matter of time. The process to create a new jersey at this level takes around two years, meaning that planning has been in the works for some time now.

For some teams, their involvement is quite minimal. They send in a few ideas, get back a few concepts and pick the one they like best. Sometimes that works and you can’t argue with it. You also can’t argue with the Kings track record of producing two, high-quality looks from the two campaigns and the end products that we’ll see on the ice tomorrow came from extensive planning and heavy involvement from the Kings, along with the NHL and Adidas.

“Adidas does the design, they’ll meet with us and we’ll give them ideas, we’ll have their whole group,” Robitaille explained. “Then they’ll come back to us with 2,3,4 options and if we don’t like it, then we’ll send them all back. Usually, there’s one or two that are close to something we like, because they listen to us. I do hear that some teams are just like ‘show me what you got and what we’ll see’ but we’re more particular. We’re an organization that’s very involved on the on the design of the jersey from the beginning to the end and we push things.”

While we can expect to see the Forum Blue and Gold this season, and perhaps in future seasons as an alternate look, the Kings have no plans at this time to completely rebrand.

Robitaille was a part of things as the Kings won a pair of Stanley Cups, and reached a third Cup Final, wearing black and white and there’s something to be said for that. In his eyes, there’s an association here in LA between those colors and winning. He’s still a huge fan of the older colors, however, and we can expect to see them back again in one form or another in the future.

“I personally like when we wear the 70’s era Jersey, whether it’s purple or gold, but the league will only let you have so many sets,” he added. “If you have your white and black for us and then the third jersey, like this year we’re doing a retro, that’s it, you’re not allowed to do another one. We push and we constantly ask about what else can we do. I was trying to get a purple version for a year, we would keep the pads and everything and then the next year a gold one, always have a couple games because I know our fans like it and the players like it too.”