Flashback: Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon infuriates hockey purists

Well, in case you haven't heard the news by now, the helmet advertisements that made their debut on NHL players last season were only just the beginning.

Earlier this week, the NHL Board of Governors approved jersey advertisements that will make their debut in the 2022-23 season, giving hockey fans just one more year of "normal" looking uniforms. The memo that was released states: 

"The ads must fit a rectangle 3 inches by 3.5 inches, making them slightly bigger than the patches that the NBA added to its jerseys for the 2017-18 season. Representatives from the NHL didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment."

For now, it looks as though hockey fans will only have to tolerate a small space of the overall jersey being covered with an advertisement. But if Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon had his way, it would be far more than that. 

He raised more than a few eyebrows earlier this summer when he stated that he'd have no problem seeing NHL jerseys completely covered in advertisements, similar to that of NASCAR drivers. From The Athletic: 

In the same news conference where Gary Bettman announced Carolina wouldn’t be getting an outdoor game next season, the commissioner also confirmed NHL helmet ads are here to stay. The logical next step is ads on jerseys, which is something Dundon and other owners are hoping will happen sooner than later.

“Look, I’d be on the very, very extreme end,” Dundon said. “Like for me if we look like Formula 1 or NASCAR, that’d be fine with me. I think the league is constantly looking at how do they maintain tradition plus maximize revenue and figure out the balance? And I think they’re doing a good job of it. But yeah, if it were left to me, it would probably be a good subset of people that didn’t like what I did.”

Okay, that's certainly taking it a little far. While most will likely agree that additional revenue for the NHL is a good thing, you'd probably be hard pressed to find long-time hockey fans who would ever be on board with such a decision. Of course, there are plenty of folks who are already swearing to never buy an NHL jersey again after news broke of the impending small advertisement patch.