Alright, this is one of my odder posts, but its something a lot of people have requested from me, because they’ve seen all the screenshots posted on here and other places. So here it is.

If you play NHL10, there’s a very good chance that you’re really into having your jerseys (and rosters, obviously) up to date. And with the Leafs announcing their new jerseys a few weeks ago, you’ve been lacking in that department. But what if you could have near-perfect replicas of the new ones?

Here’s the good news – you can! Now, the catch – you have to create a custom team. But other than that, its rather easy.

1. Get to the custom team creation menu: My NHL10 -> Creation Zone -> Create Team

2. You’re given the team info screen first. This is what I put in, personally.

Now, the reasoning for the Fourth Liner’s name, is because you can’t put in your own, which kind of sucks. I figured this was the closest to the Leafs I could find. Other options I reccomend: Benchminors, Hockey Bags, Knockouts, Misfits, Pylons.

2. Trigger over to the designer. Your first thing to do will be the logo for the home jersey. It gets really simple at this point, but the first thing you need to do is get the right colours. The easiest way to do this? Bring up the pallette selector, go to NHL, then scroll over to Toronto. There’s only one colour, and its the shade of blue you want. The white? Just use the very first colour that comes up when you go to make a selection. To make things faster, save the Blue to your favourites, as its quicker to tab over to favourites and pick the only one, than it is to go to NHL, then find Toronto afterwards.

3. Now we’re talking combinations. For the logo, go with white-blue-blue, since we’re on the home jersey (select jersey 1, by the way). To get the Leafs logo, keep scrolling to the right on the selections – all the NHL teams are there.

4. The jersey is next. The closest you’ll get to the actual ones is actually exact, without the shoulder patches. Go blue-blue-white-white-blue-white.

5. Next up is the helmet. Blue is your base, keep the black strap, white logo.

6. Next is font. There’s only one block font, so select that and go white.

7. The gloves are up to you. Often I don’t even bother changing them from the black and white scheme, but for the closest, go blue-blue-white-blue-blue-blue-white-white-white.

8. The Leafs wear extremely plain pants, so you want the first one, as its the easiest to get solid colour. Select it, then go all blue.

9. For the socks, you want the second row on the right, as they’re the exact same socks the Leafs have worn for the past 17 years. Blue as the main, white as the accent.

10. At this point, you should be about done. The goalie stuff is greyed out as you’re a skater right now, so we’ll wait on that. Switch to away-skater, and do the exact opposite blue-white combos. For example, with the jerseys…

11. The only thing that isn’t an exact flip is the helmet and gloves – the gloves stay the same, and the helmet goes white-white.

12. Goalie equipment is what you have left. Switch from away-skater to home-goalie. The current trend is for white pads with team colour accents, as you’ll seen on most goalies today. So do that for both home and away. I use a very simple combination, because if you get intricate, it may not look good on other gear (the pads Luongo wears in the preview are one of a bazillion combinations). Make your pads, then use apply to all.

12. You’re done with designing! Tab over to the rosters and pick your players. Remember, this copies them to your team, it doesn’t cut and paste them, so it would be wise to make sure that your roster is a clone of the Leafs roster. Make any trades in Player Movement if necessary.

At this point, you’re done! Enjoy your 2010/11 Leafs jerseys 2 months in advance.