Maine Mariners To Wear Knight’s Armor Uniforms For Renaissance Night | Uni Watch

Happy Sunday. I hope everyone had a pleasant Saturday — I am currently in Florida to attend the first league match for the Portland Hearts of Pine, which occurred yesterday evening in Naples against FC Naples. And though I’m here supporting Maine’s soccer team, I have another Maine team to talk about today.

The Maine Mariners, ECHL affiliates of the Boston Bruins, will wear the above knight’s armor-inspired jerseys this coming Wednesday, April 2nd. The promotion, dubbed Renaissance Night, is being held in support of Maine’s 988 lifeline, a suicide prevention and mental health crisis hotline. This is the last Mariners one-off jersey of the season. We covered the previous ones here (just last week) and here.

Local renaissance fair performers will also be present at the game. Oddly, the photo shoot was held at Portland’s Victoria Mansion, an 1860 Italianate house that now operates as a museum not far from the Mariners’ home arena. The Victorian era is pretty far from the medieval Europe that renaissance fairs try to evoke, but then again it’s not like Portland has a 12th-century church where they could go to get a real medieval feel for the photo shoot. We’re an old city, but not quite medieval old.

Anyway, the connection between suicide and mental health awareness and ren faires seems tenuous at best. The press release for the new jersey starts with “It doesn’t take a knight in shining armor to check on your friends.” It’s a worthy cause, no doubt — the jerseys feature a prominent “988” patch on the right chest, and will be auctioned off after the game, with a portion of the proceeds going to Maine 988.

The jerseys feature several silver elements with fake shadows to look like individual plates of armor. The jersey crest has a metallic sheen, faux chipping, and dots around it to make it appear bolted-on to the “armor” below, with elements designed to look engraved beneath it. The same engraved designs are also on the sleeves, above a gold sleeve stripe. The same shade of gold is used for a stripe at the hemline.

Like I said when I covered the Mariners’ Best Buddies jerseys last week, I don’t plan on turning Uni Watch Weekends into my own personal Maine Sports Fiefdom, so I do apologize about the glut of Maine sports coverage that’s occurred since I took over this role. Like I said then, though, it seems as if we are living in the halcyon days of Maine sports uniforms — new alternate identities for the baseball team, more one-off jerseys for the hockey team than I can keep track of, and a soccer team whose identity has become an instant hit globally. Maybe it’s time for the basketball team to step up!