The Next Five Former NHL Players Who Should Have Their Numbers Retired

Last week, the Los Angeles Kings announced that they will retire Anze Kopitar's No. 11 and unveil a bronze statue on Feb. 24, 2027.

Prior to that, the Boston Bruins announced in late June that they would do the same for Patrice Bergeron's No. 37 (but no statue, it seems) on Dec. 1.

At this point, it seems unlikely that more announcements of this type will be made for the coming season, but who could be next to join Bergeron and Kopitar as recently retired players whose numbers should be retired?

Here are just a few:

This is going to come up for just about everyone on the list here, but I suspect the Washington Capitals are gonna hold off until Alex Ovechkin retires to honor Backstrom's No. 19. Although they shouldn't.

He is one of just two players ever to cross the 1,000-point threshold in Capitals history, and the next-closest guy (Peter Bondra) is more than 200 points behind Backstrom's 271 goals, 762 assists and 1,033 points.

Backstrom's last game was in October 2023, and it's well past time he got the call. Backstrom likely isn't a Hall of Famer guarantee like Ovechkin and two other Caps with their numbers retired: Mike Gartner and Rod Langway, but he's a lifer, helped win them a Stanley Cup, and was Ovechkin's running buddy for almost all of the good years.

This is only a matter of time, obviously, but Backstrom's big night deserves not to be overshadowed by Ovechkin.

Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Duncan Keith, and Brent Seabrook, the pinnacles of the Chicago Blackhawks' glory era, will all have their numbers retired.

They already took care of Marian Hossa's number retirement in 2022, the classic tactic of a tanking team looking to spike a big-gate revenue game at a time when local apathy is on the rise, and all the other guys from those glory-era Chicago teams should join him soon.

But Toews should go first. It's not even a question. Are they just waiting for Kane to retire? Or for most of those guys to go into the Hall of Fame? It's not an absolute prerequisite in Chicago, but Keith Magnuson is the only one of nine players who's not in the Hall.

Easy decision either way.

The Detroit Red Wings have the unofficial "must be in the Hockey Hall of Fame to have your number retired" rule in place, so why isn't Datsyuk the 10th guy in the rafters already?

He doesn't have the gaudy career stats of guys like Steve Yzerman, Nicklas Lidstrom, or Sergei Fedorov, let alone Gordie Howe, but he's a career Red Wing who won two Cups, three Selke Trophies, and four Lady Byng awards.

Maybe he didn't leave under the best circumstances, including five years as a KHL star after he left the NHL a decade ago. But if they can mend fences with Fedorov after all that bad blood, this is a slam-dunk decision for a team that needs to generate some goodwill locally.

The Montreal Canadiens put modern players in a very tough situation: All 18 of their retired numbers were worn by Hall of Famers, and almost all of them won at least one Stanley Cup with the Habs.

Price, pointedly, did not.

But the list of players who: a) are in the Hall, and b) won MVP awards for Montreal, is incredibly short. It's Guy Lafleur, Henri Richard, Jean Beliveau, Elmer Lach, Toe Blake, and Howie Morenz. That's the whole list.

For Price to be among them is an incredibly rare feat, and the lack of team success can hardly be called his fault. In fact, when Price's effectiveness dropped after 2020, the Canadiens went from a Cup Final they kinda had no business being in to last place in the NHL.

Will the Canadiens honor Price? Maybe. But should they? That's 100 percent.

Here's another one where I would bet the team is waiting for his longtime partner to retire as well, but they shouldn't. Getzlaf is the only Anaheim Ducks player to score 1,000 career points, and unlike other greats like Teemu Selanne or Paul Kariya, he never left.

Not that he was a key cog on that Cup-winning team in 2007, but Getzlaf was certainly there for it, and for all the success they subsequently enjoyed for the next 15 seasons.

Moreover, while Getzlaf isn't a Hall of Famer and probably won't be, this franchise doesn't have a ton of history to draw on, either. One Cup, one other final appearance, and that's about it. On the downside for Getzlaf, the other three Ducks whose numbers have been retired are in the Hall of Fame.

Are they waiting for Corey Perry to call it a career? Probably. But at this point, we're talking about a guy who played for six other teams in addition to Anaheim over eight seasons. Just retire his number before a Kings game; everyone wins.

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