Canada's (possible) new Sochi 2014 jersey leaked, and it's a doozy

Early reactions: negative

By Kurt Mensching@KurtJustKurt Sep 5, 2013, 10:21pm EDT

When you have bad news and want to bury it, releasing it late on a Friday afternoon is a great way to do that. Team Canada didn't exactly release an image of its new hockey jerseys, but one made the rounds Thursday night, right about the time the rest of the Internet geared up for the start of the NFL season.

Close enough.

Of course, if this jersey, as modeled by Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews, is indeed Canada's new duds, the backlash is going to be hard to hide -- at least north of the border.

Even Toews doesn't look impressed #TeamCanadaJersey pic.twitter.com/3ZA1wLT1lV
— Oilogosphere.com (@MyOilogosphere) September 6, 2013

That picture was snapped during the 2013 NHL Player Media Tour in Newark, N.J., by Getty Images and has since been deleted, by the way.

As Harrison Mooney of Puck Daddy notes, there are a few reasons to believe it may be real. For instance, the Nike logo is located in the same areas as it was on the Team USA jerseys designed for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. It also appears to have fake laces like USA's jersey.

And people really didn't like the USA jerseys.

Early returns haven't been too hot for Canada's sweaters, either.

Nike needs to be banned from anything related to hockey. Give the contract to Kappa, Ed Hardy, K-Mart. Anybody. http://t.co/kxUW2yUgqs
— Douglas Haddow (@DouglasHaddow) September 6, 2013

Don't worry, Jonathan Toews found a worse concept than the Team Canada sweaters. pic.twitter.com/5kjknjm0HY
— Greg Wyshynski (@wyshynski) September 6, 2013

The new Team Canada jersey looks like a 4 year old made it with a red crayon.
— Catherine (@hockeymom1965) September 6, 2013

Screwing up a Team Canada jersey is the national team equivalent of accidentally starting Jose Theodore in goal
— Bruce Arthur (@bruce_arthur) September 6, 2013

And many more.

But are they real? That remains to be seen. They appear to be, and the photo service deleting the image only adds to that argument, but nothing is official yet.