Hockey, but make it fashion

Brandon Tanev likes lounging around in sweatpants as much as anyone, which is what he and his Penguins teammates have been doing for the majority of the last several months.
That being said, there is a part of the Penguins winger that does miss putting on the suits that are currently collecting dust in his closet.

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While hockey players are, for the most part, required to wear suits constantly throughout the course of a normal regular season and playoffs, their body types are not conducive to buying them off of the rack. That means most of the Penguins have to get them customized in order for them to fit.
A number of the Penguins have tailors in other cities that they prefer. Tanev has someone in Toronto. Jason Zucker gets his from a company called Gentleman's Playbook. Zach Aston-Reese goes to a place called Knot Standard in Manhattan. Marcus Pettersson buys his back home in Sweden because he prefers the European fit.

But most of the Penguins work with a pair of tailors from Quebec who come to them throughout the course of a normal season - Domenico Vacca of Giovanni Clothes in Montreal and Jean-Francois Bedard of GLORI.US Boutique in Sherbrooke - also known as their "suit guys."
"We live in them, basically," Sidney Crosby said. "Especially on the road. You're in them a lot. It's something that you're in a lot and travel in and that kind of thing. With the body types too, it's hard to get stuff right off the rack sometimes. It's nice to have that, it's convenient. (The tailors) do a great job. It's a nice little perk, for sure."
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When Crosby was 15 years old, he went to the store that Vacca's father Giovanni founded back in 1965 to get his first-ever custom suit.
"I was getting a suit for the Quebec League draft," Crosby said. "He had done a lot of suits for NHL guys and stuff. My agent had known about him and gotten suits from him."
At that point, Vacca had already been working with the Penguins organization for years. Kevin Stevens was the one who first brought him around the team in the late 1980s, and from there he built up a client base that included Mario Lemieux. They still work together to this day.
"Mario was always in style," Vacca said. "He loved to dress. He always had the latest things. He was always in a suit; I don't think I saw him without a suit on throughout his career. Today there's a lot more sports jackets (for Lemieux). A little more casual."
Vacca also began working with Mike Sullivan during his playing days, and still works with him to this day.
"I enjoy the relationships," Vacca said. "You build relationships along the way. You meet guys when they are 17, 18 years old and all of sudden, you grow up with them throughout the league. I follow them around, follow them team to team. And I enjoy what I do."
Meanwhile, Bedard first got involved with the Penguins organization after David Perron introduced him to Kris Letang.
"(Bedard) is a good friend of (Perron) and they are from the same town back home," Letang said. "I really like what he did and his vibe, the way he works. It was a good connection."
During a typical season, the custom suiting process starts during Penguins training camp, which is when both tailors will plan visits along with suitcases filled with books and catalogs of swatches, along with the full order histories for everyone in the organization who have previously ordered suits.
"We go in the room and we see all the fabrics and we all sit down and we're like, who's going to come up with the best stuff?" Letang said. "It's always fun to do. It's the best thing (laughs). You sit down, look at an 8x10 piece of fabric and you imagine yourself in it. It's a cool process."
After a player gets fitted, it takes about 10 business days for the tailors to get the fabric and cut the suit itself. From there, it takes about 3-4 weeks for them get the finished product, and after that, the tailors will ship them to the arena.
When the packages arrive in Pittsburgh, it's like Christmas morning.
"I think it's fun to get a new one and see what the boys have to say about it and stuff like that," Pettersson said.
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If you ask any player on the Penguins roster who is the best-dressed - and we did - most of them will say Letang.
"I hate to say it, but probably Tanger," Bryan Rust joked. "Tanger's just got so many options that it's hard to go against him."
Letang sits down with Bedard in the summer to pick out new suits for the year, and will get new ones every month or two months depending on how quickly he goes through them.
"I actually literally go through them," Letang said. "They're pretty much done after the year or after two years. Because I wear them on the road, but I like to stay in it. Most guys, as soon as they land and get in their room, they go right in jeans or sweatpants. I like to stay in it. I'm comfortable in it. Even on the plane, if we go like five hours, I still stay in my suit."
When it comes to his style, Letang would describe it as audacious, bold and edgy, saying he's not afraid to try things, like the brown corduroy suit with black lapels that he wore to the All-Star Game. And he trusts Bedard to give him options.

"I actually leave everything to him," Letang said of Bedard. "We sit down, we talk color and style. This year, I've been wearing a lot more double-breasted suits than usual. But I leave it up to him. I say, 'Do whatever you want.' He knows what I like. I like a lot of greens, a lot of blues. So, he stays away from black."
At this point, Letang's 7-year-old son Alex - who has some custom suits of his own to match his dad - chimed in.
"Don't stay away from black. You like black!" Alex said.
"I do like black," Kris said with a laugh. "But not on my suits."
When it comes to who he thinks has the best style, Letang said that he feels Evgeni Malkin's style is 'elegant.' But he also feels that Crosby's has come a long way.
"I don't know, I like Sid's," Letang said with a shrug. "Now he's thinking a little bit outside of the box. He used to be gray or blue. Now he's mixing it up. He's got good style."
After hearing that, Crosby had to laugh.
"Maybe because he saw a little burgundy, he thinks I'm getting wild now," joked Crosby, who claims he's "pretty plain" and doesn't veer far from gray, blue and black.
"Certain guys are just classic guys and always wear the same thing, they're very traditional," Vacca said. "It's hard to get some guys wearing these bold checks. But it's 50-50 now on teams. Before you always had one guy go really outlandish. Now you have a lot of guys that really step out of the box."
That tends to be a trend with the younger players, like Jared McCann - whose favorite suit is the one he calls his "Barney suit."
"My purple one is probably my favorite," said McCann, who tends to wear it the most during Hockey Fights Cancer month. "I got it when I was in Florida. Just wanted to change it up, get kind of a crazy suit. So, I ordered a purple one with a nice flowery interior and it was just awesome. I love wearing it. I don't wear it very often because I get chirped for it.
(My girlfriend) Val hates it (laughs)."
Another player who likes to have some fun with his suits is Zucker, who said Penguins fans haven't seen anything yet when it comes to his game-day wardrobe.
"Suits are my thing that I try to go crazy with," Zucker said. "And actually, these have been my tame ones, I'm going to say. Because you can't come guns a-blazing Day 1 (laughs). You just can't do it."
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For the players who don't want to get too crazy with the color of the suit itself, there are a lot of different customizations they can add to make them their own - starting with the lining of the jacket.
"We have a collection of about 100-something different colors, but we can also make really personalized linings," Vacca said. "We can take their pictures and put them in there. I've done pictures. When I do weddings, I do pictures of guys with their fiancées inside the jacket. Some guys want pictures of their pet dogs. Some guys want pictures of their cars. We can do anything. Skulls are really big right now. There's a lot of different skull linings."
A few of the Penguins love the personalized linings, and feel that's the area where they can get creative.
"I think the most fun part is picking the lining on the inside," Aston-Reese said. "You keep the suit pretty standard, but no one ever sees the lining. One of mine has baby blue piranhas and one has all these crazy flowers. You can do some pretty cool stuff on the inside."

Rust always works in a pattern that has a special, nostalgic feeling for him.
"I'm a big fan of the paisley," Rust said. "I'll try to put some sort of paisley in the lining. When I first started wearing suits to games, I think I was in midgets or something. I had a paisley tie and it was the first tie that I wore and I wore it to every game. Ever since then, I've loved it."

Brian Dumoulin and Justin Schultz have matching linings that feature different wine labels. Tanev, who likes to coordinate his linings with his pocket squares, has one with fireworks and the words 'KABOOM' and 'BANG' written in graphic lettering.
Other customizations include getting their monograms, jersey numbers, names, nicknames and signatures emblazoned on different parts of the suit.
"One of my suits says 'Reeser' in the pocket, and then I put my signature under the collar," Aston-Reese said.
Apart from the suit, the players like to have fun with their ties, belts and socks (if they even wear them, as some of the guys - like Zucker - go for the loafer look every now and then).
"I get a lot of socks for Christmas, so I try to switch those up every once in a while," McCann said.
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Since these are hockey players we're talking about, it's no surprise that a few of them admitted to getting superstitious when it comes to their game-day attire.
"If we win with one suit, I'll keep that one for a while," Tristan Jarry said. "Then if we lose, I'll switch it out to a different one."

And while we're not quite certain we believe him, Crosby said at the end of the day, it all comes down to function over fashion.
"You wear certain ones and get used to wearing them, or ones that are better for the road and don't wrinkle as much, you know?" Crosby said. "There's nothing really to it other than that some are more wearable than others. You might not want to wear your tightest suit on a seven-day road trip. The ones that don't wrinkle or wear well and you can wear them on the road for a bit, that's kind of how I look at it. I'm sure everyone looks at it different. Some guys go to Florida and bring out the brightest suit they can find (laughs). Everyone's got their own thing."