Ice-O-Topes women’s hockey team recreate classic photos in 2013 pin-up calendar

The Ice-O-Topes claim to be the original hockey pin-up calendar gals.

For the last three years, the Vancouver-based women's ice hockey team has been raising money for both their practice time and local charities by way of a very popular annual calendar, featuring the members of the team wearing little in the way of equipment. Here's a gallery of last year's photos.

But after three years of standard pin-up shots, the Ice-O-Topes opted for a new challenge: recreating classic hockey images.

Of course, despite the new approach, they didn't stray too far from what makes the calendar popular. (Hint: it's not the font choices.)

"The moments we recreated for this year's calendar are all very recognizable, even though in our version, the players are scantily-clad women," said professional photographer Rebecca Blissett, who is also an Ice-O-Topes winger.

Yes, the poses may be classic hockey, but the outfits are classic Ice-O-Topes. You'll recall that, in the original Orr photo, he's not wearing a bikini. Additionally, I don't remember Steve Hanson looking quite this good:

So what motivated the change?

"I wanted to get away from doing pin-up photography for our latest calendar venture, as I feel that style is a bit overdone at the moment," said Blissett. "So we went with the more challenging theme of recreating action shots."

The new approach works. I speak strictly as a hockey fan, of course.

Partial proceeds from the calendar go to Britannia After School Hockey program, which provides underprivileged teens in East Vancouver an opportunity to get into hockey. The BASH program was chosen because many of the Ice-O-Topes are from the East Vancouver area, which might explain why they went with this photo:

You can check out more photos (or just get yourself a calendar) at iceotopes.com.