For a short period of time, the NHL incorporated the famous/infamous “Cooperalls” hockey pants into the league.
In this feature story from The Hockey News’ special-edition “Greatest Jersey of All Time” magazine (Sept. 1, 2009 cover date), senior writer Ken Campbell delved into the intrigue and backlash regarding the long-pants equipment era.
(And this is our regular pitch to you: to access The Hockey News’ exclusive Archive, visit THN.com/Free and subscribe to the magazine.)
The Cooperall long pant style began in the late 1970s, but a version of it became more famous when NHL teams in Hartford and Philadelphia began wearing them in the early 1980s. Some fans loved the different look, while many traditionalists decried them. But in a different timeline, the Cooperalls look might have proven to be more popular than they were in real life.
Cooperalls are SO back pic.twitter.com/BUVEKyWUuY
— Carolina Hurricanes (@Canes) February 10, 2024
“The Flyers were in them and the Whalers had them and there were probably five or six other teams that were starting to express a lot of interest at that point,” said Cooper executive Jim Geary. “But then it got vetoed by the NHL vote and that was the end of it. We were always pushing the envelope in terms of research and development and we might have been ahead of our time. You know what it really came down to? It came down to the opinion of the old hockey gods. They said, ‘What are you doing? They look like pajamas. We don’t want this in our game and get it out of there.’ ”
Ultimately, the hockey world moved on from the Cooperall look after a couple of seasons, but the impact it made on fans’ memories still resonates today. And the streamlined nature of the Cooperalls became a fixture with modern-day jersey-and-pants combinations.
“You look at NHL players and their jerseys don’t flap in the wind anymore and they look very streamlined out there right now,” Geary said. “If you go back to old images of Cooperalls, that’s what was happening. It was practical and it made a lot of sense, but it violated what the look of hockey was at the time.”
REMEMBERING THE COOPERALL
Sept. 1, 2009
By Ken Campbell
When you see how sleek and compact equipment looks on today’s NHL player, it’s hard to believe the trend started nearly three decades ago with an innovation many consider to be an all-time abomination.
The much-maligned Cooperalls, which in cyberspace take a pounding as one of the worst-looking equipment trends ever to hit the game, were the precursor to much of today’s high-tech, aerodynamic and light equipment, and may have been ahead of their time.
“Nobody ever says it was a big mistake,” said Jim Geary, who was an executive with Cooper at the time and is still with the company’s reincarnation, Bauer Hockey.
“It was just, ‘Why did that thing never take off? What happened there?’ ”
In fact, a good number of NHL players wore the Cooperall girdle and simply put the hockey pant shell over top of it if they weren’t wearing the long pants look themselves.
So what did Cooperalls in? Well, pretty much the same thing that crushes a lot of new ideas today – the hockey establishment. If you think those who run the game are dinosaurs now, you should have seen them roaming the earth in the early 1980s. Let’s just say that most of them were not exactly open to change.
“The Flyers were in them and the Whalers had them and there were probably five or six other teams that were starting to express a lot of interest at that point,” Geary said. “But then it got vetoed by the NHL vote and that was the end of it. We were always pushing the envelope in terms of research and development and we might have been ahead of our time.
“You know what it really came down to? It came down to the opinion of the old hockey gods. They said, ‘What are you doing? They look like pajamas. We don’t want this in our game and get it out of there.’ ”
The official explanation the NHL gave for mandating uniform, well, uniforms, was that Cooperalls were a safety hazard because the fabric made them too slippery once a player hit the ice, particularly when the ice was fresh. But Geary said the company addressed that problem and the protection the Cooperalls offered was far superior to what was on the market at the time. He said medical staffs for NHL teams were on board with the product, but management and players bucked the trend.
And there were some in the hockey world who were enthusiastic about the concept. Flyers owner Ed Snider loved them and was the first to get on board and he was followed by Whalers owner Howard Baldwin, another progressive voice in the game. After seeing them in his team’s rookie camp in the early 1980s, former Winnipeg Jets GM John Ferguson raved about Cooperalls and said he wanted his team to be the first wearing them.
Geary recalled trying to sell the Peterborough Petes on the concept. Future coach-GM Dick Todd was the trainer at the time and told Geary it was a waste of time pitching the product. As Geary was leaving the rink, he bumped into Petes coach Mike Keenan, who asked about the equipment. Within minutes, Keenan was skating around the ice wearing Cooperalls and immediately told Todd to order a set for the Petes.
Ron Francis wore Cooperalls as a Whalers rookie and scored 25 goals. Bobby Clarke won the only Selke Trophy of his career wearing the duds in 1982-83 and Mark Howe became the only Cooperall-wearing player in NHL history to be named to a first all-star team. But in the two years the Flyers wore them, they failed to advance past the first round of the playoffs and the only season the Whalers wore them, they finished second-last in the league with a record of 19-54-7.
There’s little doubt Cooperalls were a huge upgrade in terms of protection and aerodynamics compared to what was available at the time. Pants to that point fit more like a barrel and left large gaps of exposed body parts. Developed over four years by research and development experts David Jenkins and Len Clement, the Cooperall provided protection from the top of the knees up to the rib cage without surrendering anything in the way of fit or mobility. The uniform apparently added 20 percent more protection while being 40 percent lighter.
“It was supposed to be a one-piece uniform and it originally had a jersey that went with it as well,” Geary said.
“The striping of the jersey was changed to flow down the body and the stripe on the side of the pants flowed up into the jersey. We were actually streamlining the player. When you put a hockey player in Cooperalls, man, he looked like a pencil.”
So, aesthetics won out in the end. But the protection and the efficiency that players get from their equipment today can be directly traced back to Cooperalls.
“You look at NHL players and their jerseys don’t flap in the wind anymore and they look very streamlined out there right now,” Geary said. “If you go back to old images of Cooperalls, that’s what was happening. It was practical and it made a lot of sense, but it violated what the look of hockey was at the time.”
The Hockey News Archive is an exclusive collection of more than 2,640 issues and more than 156,000 articles exclusively produced for subscribers, chronicling the complete history of The Hockey News from 1947 until this day. Visit the archives at THN.com/archive and subscribe today at subscribe.thehockeynews.com
News Summary:
- Archive: Famous Cooperalls Were Practical for Flyers, Whalers Before NHL Outlawed Them
- Check all news and articles from the latest NHL updates.