re: Is there a reason why hockey uniforms haven't become more ergonomically pleasing?

Yeah the current pad design doesn’t allow for it. The hip pads on hockey pants come up pretty high and they have a tailbone pad that comes halfway up the lower back - so a tight jersey wouldn’t cover any of that and would look pretty dumb.

A better question might be to look at advances in hockey pads over the last 50 years. I just don’t know how you could get it much more compact than it is. Landing on ice doesn’t feel very good…