Canadiens announce their first ever jersey sponsor.

The Montreal Canadiens have succumb to greed and have officially announced their first ever jersey sponsor.

We have known for some time that several NHL teams have been looking at a way to add additional sponsorships to their branding ever since the Covid-19 pandemic hit the National Hockey League hard, financially speaking. The fact is though that the Montreal Canadiens are one of the most successful franchises in the entire league, and many fans appear to be viewing this as an unnecessary way for the team to enrich itself, at the expense of the fans.

In this case the Canadiens have announced a partnership with Royal Bank Canada, a company whose logo will now appear on the front of the Canadiens jersey. While fans will still be able to purchase a jersey without the advertising on it for now, you have to imagine that eventually fans who want to proudly wear a Canadiens jersey will have to come to grips with the fact that they will also be effectively acting as a billboard for corporate interests now as well. While some of these jerseys patches have been relatively small in the past, the patch on the Canadiens jersey appears to be fairly sizeable.

It's not exactly easy to tell, given that the Canadiens have thus far only released a single image which you can see below courtesy of their official wedbsite:

Thus far the reaction from the Canadiens fan base appears to be universally negative. I was looking for a positive response to the announcement but I didn't find one. Here are just some of the reactions that we can share with you: