Do you have stock in Fanatics or something? Lazerus is getting absolutely ROASTED on The Athletic as he should for his glowing puff piece about the new jerseys and how much feedback they got from the teams and how much they care about quality and their awesome success rate. It's like Fanatics wrote the article themselves.
In the meantime, even if you just walked into the Sabres Store or any sporting goods store and looked at the Fanatics stuff you can see it's complete junk. There may not be one topic that all fans across all of sport agree on more than how horrible Fanatics is and how their complete monopoly on every league's merchandising and an almost complete monopoly on the cards industry is ruining sports. It's well known that after Fanatics buys a company (Majestic, Mitchell & Ness) the quality goes way down. They've also crowded out other quality brands like '47 Brand hats and merchandise which makes far superior gear - I think the '47 Brand hats are much better than New Era, and I know I'm supposed to think New Era are the best. The Fanatics hats the players wear look cheap even through the TV screen.
They have already said they plan on no changes to the Fanatics "Breakaway" jerseys which look and feel horrible Their new cheaper option is selling practice jerseys like this is some new innovation.
Next we'll be hearing about how awesome TicketMaster and LiveNation are for sports and music fans.
The issues with Fanatics stuff in general and what they are doing with the on-ice jerseys are two completely different things.
Fanatics are using the same manufacturer that has been used for the past 50 years or so (SP). The most noticeable change so far has been the changes to the shoulders and beefing up the forearms.
They also know the issues that Nike's re-design of the MLB jerseys has created.
I think the pessimism about the on-ice authentic jerseys will be overblown because people will pre-judge things based on past experiences with Fanatics and I think they will end up being roughly on par with the adidas on-ice jerseys.
I expect the Fanatics 2nd & 3rd tier jerseys to be as trash as they have been in the past. And the same goes for their hats, tees, hoodies, etc.