New York Giants 2024 First round pick (6th overall) Malik Nabers wore number 9 during the NFL preseason, but it was widely known that after the team announced its initial 53-man roster, Nabers would choose a different number in his rookie season. With Nabers’ jersey expected to be a best-seller, Big Blue fans were eagerly awaiting the number the dynamic receiver would wear when the Giants Minnesota Vikings on Sunday, September 8, at MetLife Stadium.
Would the NY Islanders or any other NHL team ever retire a jersey number?
On Wednesday we got our answer with an unexpected twist. Nabers will wear the number 1 that the franchise will wear for Ray Flaherty, a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame who won an NFL championship with the Giants in 1934. Fan reaction was mixed. Flaherty last played for the team nearly 90 years ago. He’s not a household name, even among diehard fans, and the news makes him known to a younger generation of the fan base. Then again, it’s rare for a number to be retired, and doing this for a rookie who has never caught an NFL pass in a regular season game is a bold move for a franchise.
This got us thinking: Under what circumstances would the New York Islanders or has any NHL team retired a jersey number? NHL history teaches us that it takes extraordinary circumstances to reissue a retired jersey number. Mario Lemieux’s No. 66 was built by the Pittsburgh Penguins when “Super Mario” came back and got his jersey number back. That makes perfect sense. The Winnipeg Jets had the No. 9 of Bobby Hull, and when the franchise moved to Phoenix, the Coyotes kept the number 9 until Bobby’s son Brett joined the team at the end of his career in the 2005-06 season. The Coyotes stopped retiring the numbers acquired from Winnipeg when they became the number 9. Arizona Coyotesand now the franchise has moved to Utah. There is also the mysterious case of Larry Aurie and the Detroit Red Wings. The number was technically retired, then given to his cousin, and then no longer placed at the top of the roster when other Red Wing players did so years later.
It is difficult to imagine the Islanders will have a number 22, 5 or 19 on the ice again, regardless of the extraordinary circumstances. The franchise or any other NHL franchise would never give that number to a rookie, regardless of how highly touted he is after the draft. The Islanders already have a unique case where their current captain, Andrew Lee, bears the number 27 as it hangs from the rafters for Johannes Tonelli. Lee has earned the right to keep his number, but Vladimir Malakhov changed his number from 23 to 92 when the team honored “Mr. Islander” Bob Nystrom in 1995. When Lee lifts the Stanley Cup as captain, his number 27 may be hoisted in the same way alongside Tonelli’s Andy Bathgate And Adam Graves share the space under the rafters of Madison Square Garden with their No. 9.
So is there any circumstance under which it is even remotely conceivable that a retired Islanders number would be reissued? Maybe, just maybe, there is, but it would require an established star with Hall of Fame prospects to come to the Islanders and get permission from an Islanders legend to wear the number. What if Steven Stamkos asked Butch Goring or Matthew Tkachuk called Bryan Trottier?
I’d like to think that the new star would have too much respect for an Isles legend under these circumstances, or that the owners would step in and take the matter off the table. But you never know, and as impossible as it seems now, in 40-50 years it might not be the same.