Fans of every team sport enjoy owning and wearing the uniforms of their heroes, but the relationship between the hockey fan and the sport's sweater is distinctive in the sporting landscape. We've documented this in some detail at OFB, and so to us the news yesterday of the Caps overhauling their look for next season struck us as significant indeed. It is not of course on the order of a major trade or free agent acquisition or management shakeup, but it is not inconsequential either. And it might not be uninteresting to examine why.

I was able to find a YouTube link to the entire "Hockey Falls" series of superbly amusing television commercials that ran during ESPN's coverage of the NHL years back, and two things stood out to me about the litany of spots. Every one featured the puck-crazed enthusiasts in their hockey sweaters, in every setting at every hour. And one spot, titled "April," magnificently illuminates the sweater's enduring lure for its owner. It takes place over a bar's bubble hockey game and is predicated on an ex-girlfriend presenting herself and her new boyfriend before her jilted sweatered mullet, to flaunt her new dalliance.

"That's just wrong," the mulleted friend tells his stunned and sullen playing partner.

"And he's wearing my sweater, too," replies the cross-checked to the heart . . . "That's really wrong."

It would be really wrong, in my judgment, if the Caps didn't get their new look really right. I'm pretty sure that last summer the Ducks didn't (although admittedly they had nowhere to go but up with their look), and I know with their BuffaSlug the Sabres didn't, either. I hope the fashion bar set by Caps' management is considerably higher.

You see, we in hockey D.C. have had so little to be fantastically enthusiastic about over the past 30-plus years. Spasms of victory and achievement book-ended and blunted most often by enormous struggle. With the present darkness yielding to a new and far more promising dawn, it would be wonderful if Hockey Falls, Nation's Capital style, could march into Verizon Center next autumn outfitted in fresh new threads that were the talk of the entire league. And perhaps beyond.

When enemey fans whose teams are outfitted in the finest, Original Six look roam our arena concourse they are entitled to a fashion haughtiness that we as Caps' fans, at long last, I think deserve. It's funny how what was once taken for granted as moderately good looking sports fashion (the original Caps' and Bullets' jerseys) regain popularity when juxtaposed by forgettable replacements. Clearly the Caps can't and won't return all the way back to their original look, but I hope the redesign captures much of what was good about it.

But what specifically drives the profound attachment a puckhead has with his team's and or favorite players' sweaters? I'd love to hear from OFB readers their own rationale for the size and quality of the collected hockey garb they possess -- to learn of the significance the collection has for them. I know that among the four of us at OFB we could fill a First Lady's closet with game worns, practice editions, and novelty sweaters (I'm ever angling for OrderedChaos' Guinness sweater).

I can think of two prime motivations fueling the enduring appeal of the hockey sweater. The most primal is what I think is a shared yearning to be visually associated with the rugged warrior ethos and culture of our great game. In wearing a Scott Stevens' sweater, for instance, a puckhead is clearly expressing his appreciation for the future Hall of Famer's brutal bravado.

But I think it's also likely true that sweatered hockey fans also want to advertise their basic love affair with this niche game, what is akin to patronage of the underground rock band while your big brother rocks out to Bon Jovi. The Sporting News' Steve Wulf puts it this way: "Part of the joy of being a hockey fan is knowing you love something that not everybody gets."

Here's what we know already about the new look: it'll be produced by Reebok and carry the controversial "slimmer" look. We're no fans of that, as you know, and last autumn we joined thousands in adding ourselves to an organized protest against it, but Gary Bettman's flawed vision and attacks against tradition once again won out. So it is what it is. We do know that the Caps will return to their original red, white, and blue colors, which I cannot imagine eliciting protest from anyone in this town. We never should have ditched them. Count me among those who'll never miss the dour and drab black look that blurred names and numbers from the view of every upper deck (and many lower ones too). We don't know what manner, if any, of emblem change might accompany the new look.

• That it achieve durable and classic distinction. As a fan, I'm not interested in change for change's sake, and being back on message boards in seven or nine years' time reading full-throated fan appeals for an improved look. Shifting looks virtually by the year are for the NBA. It seems to me that you overhaul your look to improve it but you do so with the expectation that you get it so right with the remake that you arrive at a realm akin to the durable distinction of the Original Six appearance. If you're not striving for this rarefied realm, why bother?