Custom Hockey Jerseys in Canada: What to Order

The single most useful distinction we can give you. When a team asks for custom jerseys, they mean one of two things, and shops are often vague about which they sell.

A sublimated game sweateris a manufactured garment. The artwork is dyed into polyester fabric before the jersey is cut and sewn, which is why the colour goes edge to edge, through the sleeves, with no print you can feel. It has a hockey cut — longer in the back, wider through the body to clear pads — usually a lace-up or tie-down collar, and a tail. It cannot be made from a stock blank, so it is quote-only and it takes longer than printed apparel.

A printed team topis your design decorated onto a blank we stock. That is the right answer for practice jerseys, warm-up tees, bench hoodies, coaches’ polos and the parent-and-fan shirts that usually outnumber the players’ sweaters. It is cheaper, faster, has no minimum on digital methods, and you can build it yourself online.

Most hockey orders that reach us are actually the second thing, or both at once: a dozen sublimated sweaters quoted directly, plus forty printed hoodies and tees for the bench and the stands.

This comes first because getting it wrong makes the whole order useless, and it is the one part we cannot decide for you.

Leagues and associations set their own requirements, and they vary. The things that commonly have rules attached: the size of the back number and whether a smaller front or sleeve number is required, whether name bars are permitted or mandatory, whether a captain’s C or A may be applied, sponsor placement, and in some associations the colours themselves so that home and away sweaters stay distinguishable.

Ask your league or association for their current rules in writing before artwork starts. We print what you approve — we are not the authority on your league’s regulations, and we would rather raise the question now than press forty non-compliant sweaters. If you tell us the numbers the rulebook requires, we will build the artwork to them.

On printed team wear, per-player personalisation runs through the studio’s Team names & numberschart: one row per garment with the player’s name, number and size, typed in or pasted straight from a spreadsheet. The name prints across the upper back with the number below it. Each personalised piece costs a little more than a plain run of the same design, and checkout waits until you approve the whole chart— which exists precisely because a misspelled name is the one error nobody can fix after the press runs.

Our guide to ordering names and numbers covers the collection problem: get the roster from the coach or the registrar rather than from a group chat, confirm spelling with accents intact, and settle duplicate numbers before you order rather than after.

On sublimated sweaters the names and numbers are usually part of the manufactured design rather than applied afterwards, which is one reason those orders need their roster locked earlier. Traditional twill lettering— stitched-on fabric letters and numbers, the classic heavy jersey look — is a separate job again; ask for it by name when you quote.

This is where the volume is, and where most teams underestimate what they need. A twelve-player roster routinely produces a forty-piece apparel order once you count everyone who wants something.

• Practice tops. Printed performance tees or cheap pinnies. Nobody sublimates practice jerseys for a rec team.
• Bench and travel hoodies. The single most-wanted piece of team apparel. The Gildan 18500 Heavy Blend is our standard, and players will wear it long after the season.
• Coaches and staff. A polo reads differently from a player top and is what most coaches actually want.
• Parents and fans.Cotton tees with the club crest, often with “#14’s mom” on the back. This is usually the biggest single line on the order.
• Caps and toques. Embroidered, and the thing that sells at the rink. See custom toques.

All of that is printed apparel on stock blanks, which means it can go through the free design studio with no account and no deposit — and it all counts toward the same quantity breaks when it is the same garment.

Printed team wear prices like any other apparel order: the blank, the number of ink colours, the number of print locations, and the quantity. A printed tee is roughly $12–$18 each at 50 pieces and drops under $10 each in the hundreds; full-colour DTF sits slightly higher per piece with no setup fee. Every quote is free and includes a mockup. Per-player names and numbers add a little per piece on top.

Quantity moves in steps. In the online design studio the per-piece price drops at 12, 24, 50 and 100 pieces, and every colour of the same garment in one order counts toward the same price break. For a hockey club that is worth planning around: home-colour and away-colour tees of the same blank are one quantity, and if the parents’ shirts use the same blank as the players’ warm-ups, put them in the same order.

Sublimated sweaters are priced as a manufactured product rather than off a print tier, so they are quoted directly through the custom jerseys service or the free quote form. Tell us the quantity, the cut and whether you need name bars, and you will get a real number rather than a range.

Standard turnaround on clothing is 1–2 weeks.Most apparel orders can rush — 4–5 business days or 1–3 business days, priced at checkout — and every order shows the dates it will be ready before you pay. Sublimated jerseys run longer, because they are manufactured rather than printed; ask for the current lead time when you quote rather than assuming it matches printed apparel.

The practical consequence for a season that is already underway: printed bench wear and fan shirts are still very achievable mid-season, and a tournament in three weeks is a normal rush job. New sublimated sweaters usually are not a mid-season decision — those get ordered in the off-season or at registration, and teams that leave it until October end up playing the first half of the year in last year’s sweaters.

If you have a tournament date, tell us the date rather than asking how fast we are. Every order shows the dates it will be ready before you pay, so you will know whether it works before you commit.

Hockey artwork has a specific failure mode: club crests are often old. The file the association sends you is frequently a low-resolution image someone exported from a website in 2011, sometimes with a white box behind it. At jersey scale that shows.

Send it anyway. Every order is reviewed by a human designer before it goes to press. A person checks artwork resolution, colour, sizing and placement, and either fixes the file or tells you what is wrong — it is not an automated preflight. A crest that needs it gets redrawn as vector so it stays sharp at any size, which is the same thing our logo vectorization service does as a standalone job. Sponsor logos arrive in whatever state the sponsor keeps them in, and the same applies.

Nothing prints until you approve a free mockup on the actual product. For a team order that mockup is worth more than usual, because it is the moment a coach notices the association crest is the old one.

Hockey has a sizing problem no other sport order shares: the game sweater goes over equipment. Shoulder pads, elbow pads and a chest protector add real bulk, which is why hockey jerseys are cut wider through the body and longer in the back than a normal garment, and why a player’s jersey size has little to do with their t-shirt size.

Two consequences worth planning for. For sublimated game sweaters, size on the manufacturer’s own chart with pads in mind rather than on what the player wears to school — and for a youth team, size up, because a season of growth happens inside one set of sweaters. For printed bench and fan wear, the opposite applies: those are worn over normal clothes, so normal apparel sizing is right.

Goalies are their own case. A goalie sweater is cut considerably larger to clear chest and arm protection, and it is usually ordered as a separate size rather than scaled up from the skaters’. If you have a goalie on the roster, say so when you quote; it is the single most commonly forgotten line on a hockey order.

Most minor-hockey and beer-league sweaters carry a sponsor, and sponsors are the least predictable part of the artwork. The logo arrives as whatever the sponsor happens to have — a screenshot from their website, a JPEG with a white box behind it, occasionally a photograph of a sign.

Build in time for that. Ask the sponsor for the best file they have as early as you ask for the money, and send it to us straight away rather than at approval stage. If it needs redrawing we will redraw it as vector so it stays sharp at jersey scale, which is what our logo vectorization service does as a standalone job — but that is a step with a duration, and it is the step that most often makes a team miss its own deadline.

Placement is worth a conversation too, because it interacts with league rules. Sponsor marks commonly go on the chest below the crest, across the shoulders or on the back above the number — and some associations restrict where a sponsor may appear, or how many there may be. That is another item for the rulebook list rather than something to settle at mockup stage.