A Carolina Hurricanes blog with occasional news about the rest of the NHL.

Monday, August 28, 2006

Canes historical sweater numbers

Because I'm bored....

With the help of the Internet Hockey Database, which makes up for its lack of flashiness with its wealth of information, I've made yet another list. This one shows every Carolina Hurricane who has worn each sweater number. Only during the "Carolina Hurricanes" portion of the franchise history. No Whalers are listed, nor are any WhalerCanes listed by the number they wore in Hartford. For example, Glen Wesley wore #20 in Hartford, but I'm only talking about Raleigh here.

The Whalers had retired the numbers
  • 2 -- Rick Ley
  • 9 -- Gordie Howe
  • 19 -- John McKenzie


When the franchise moved, the Canes put #2 and #19 back into circulation, but continued to honor the #9 of "Mr. Hockey", who, as a 52-year old man, notched 41 points (15/26) for the Whale in 1979-80.

Some players have worn two or more different sweater numbers for the Canes. Most numbers have been worn by different players in the 9 year history.

Since moving to Raleigh, the Canes have retired retired the following sweater numbers:
  • 3 -- Steve Chiasson (unofficial; no sweater hangs in rafters)
  • 10 -- Ron Francis
  • 99 -- Wayne Gretzky (league-wide)


In addition to #9 and #99, the following numbers have never been worn by a Hurricane:
40, 41, 43, 49, 50, 54, 57, 58, 60, 64-69, 72-76, 78, 79, 81-91, 93-96, 98.

The mascot, Stormy, wears #97 because the franchise relocated to North Carolina in 1997. I assume that the number 97 is off-limits as well.

So... here's the list. A name in bold face means the player is active and still wears that number. A name in all caps means the number has been retired in that player's honor.



For the 2006-07 season, we still don't know which # any of the newcomers will wear. I went ahead and assumed that John Grahame will wear his familiar #47. Scott Walker, who has traditionally worn #24 will have to buy that number from Andrew Hutchinson or choose something else. Trevor "The Dude" Letowski has always worn #10, but that obviously won't be happening.

I may have missed some names and numbers, as the database has some incomplete information. I may have also copied my data wrong. Feel free to let me know if I've missed something.

Oh, dear hockey gods, please let something newsworthy happen soon.

6 comments:

Bill Purdy said...

Wow. You were bored.

One other thing about the hokeydb: it's riddled with popups, adware, spyware, etc. I always have to spend an extra 15 seconds shutting down all the little windows that litter my desktop. And I use Firefox, which thwarts a lot of that stuff most of the time.

Anonymous said...

Boredom is the root of all creativity :D Nice list, man.

I see at least two somewhat high profile players missing (maybe not the only ones but these were my favourite guys back then):
Geoff Sanderson wore #8 and Jeff Brown might have been #27 in the first year of Carolina Hurricanes.

Anonymous said...

You got tanabe back

DrFrankLives said...

nnnnnnnnnoooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


What the hell are they doing? trying to undo all the good they did last year? WTF!!?

DuMont is out there for the taking and we sign Tanable at $900k and announce we're out there looking for a backup forward.

ARRRGGGHHH

Anonymous said...

"The Dude" Letowski. Brilliant! I hope it sticks.

Anonymous said...

I could have sworn that Ron Francis also wore #18...can you check for me?

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