Team USA surprises in Sochi with 1960 throwback jersey

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The United States faced Slovenia today, but they weren't wearing either of the two jerseys that were unveiled in the fall. It was a pleasant surprise to see the USA donning a classic jersey — a throwback to what the 1960 gold medal team wore.

Normally I wouldn't be so slow to post news like this, but I wanted to enjoy the game unspoiled this morning. (Since I was sleeping at 4:30 AM, I relied on my TiVo.)

So I hadn't seen the tweet from USA Hockey teasing the jerseys hanging in the locker room. I found out on TV.

I think it's awesome that the U.S. played this one close to the vest. It was a very cool surprise this morning. What did you think of it?

Your Olympic jersey rankings are confusing

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The Icethetics Cover Story series debuted last week focusing on the new national team uniforms being worn in Sochi this month. In it I included a wealth of polls and rating widgets so everyone could quickly share their feedback.

At the end of the article, I shared my rankings and set up a poll asking readers to pick their top three favorites to form a community ranking. But between that poll and the individual ratings for each country, I was surprised to find wildly different results.

Take a look at these lists to see what I mean.

By Top 3 Poll

The poll, listing all 14 nations, allowed readers to select up to three favorites. This list is in order of most votes to fewest.

  1. Canada
  2. Slovakia
  3. Sweden
  4. United States
  5. Russia
  6. Germany
  7. Czech Republic
  8. Latvia
  9. Finland
  10. Slovenia
  11. Austria
  12. Norway
  13. Switzerland
  14. Japan

By Individual Ratings

Readers cast individual ratings for each nation. There was no comparison to other nations for this setup.

  1. Sweden
  2. Slovakia
  3. Germany
  4. Austria
  5. Latvia
  6. Slovenia
  7. Norway
  8. Russia
  9. Switzerland
  10. Canada
  11. Czech Republic
  12. Finland
  13. United States
  14. Japan

How strange is that? On their own, the U.S. and Canada were ripped by voters, yet they ended up in most people's top three. Sounds like some of us are having trouble being honest with ourselves.

So while Canada and the U.S. fell sharply, Austria jumped from 11th to 4th when you look at individual ratings instead of top three selections. What I find funny is that Slovakia ended up second in both groups. And we all just flat out hate Japan's jerseys.

What do you make of these results? Did you vote with your head or your heart?