Holmstrom out, Andersson recalled
Just a quick note this morning — Tomas Holmstrom, who left last night’s game against the Nashville Predators with an undisclosed lower body injury, will not be available for tonight’s game against the St. Louis Blues. News has leaked that Homer suffered a groin injury at some point late in the second period.
Replacing him in the lineup is call-up Joakim Andersson (6-2, 206, Sweden, Center), who will become the first Red Wing to wear #63 in team history. His jersey is seen above, courtesy of a tweet from DetroitRedWing.com’s Bill Roose. Also according to Roose, Andersson will play on the fourth line with Cory Emmerton and Justin Abdelkader.
The 22-year-old is making his NHL debut after 109 games played in the American Hockey League with the Grand Rapids Griffins. In 29 games this season, Andersson has 8 goals and 9 assists, and his 17 points place him fifth on team scoring. Gustav Nyquist, who was the first Wings call-up this season, leads the team with 30.
Tomas Tatar, who was called up December 15th but did not play, seemed like a more likely candidate, but the Red Wings want to see what they have in their 3rd round pick from 2007. Detroit didn’t have a second round pick that year, but their first round pick (Brendan Smith) also made his NHL debut this season.
As always, you can stay up to date with THE CHART by clicking the various tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet.
I was looking at the number history on the chart and noticed you have Mike Sillinger listed as the last #12. I do believe Bob Errey wore #12 for a short time in the 95-96 season – before switching to 21 the night Sid Abel’s number retirement happened.
Bob Errey wore 12 in many of his stops, but was always #21 in Detroit:
http://www.hockeysweaternumbers.com/players/errey_bob/
http://www.hockey-reference.com/players/e/erreybo01.html
Sid Abel’s jersey was retired on April 29, 1995.
Errey was acquired on February 27, 1995. Mike Sillinger (who was wearing #12 that season) was traded out of Detroit on April 4, 1994. So they overlapped. Errey couldn’t have worn #12 in his first month with Detroit because Sillinger was in it and they likely wouldn’t have allowed a new player to select #12 since it was known for over a year that Abel’s jersey was to be retired.
Well, I was going 15 years back in the memory bank, so I guess there is some clouding in my mind to be expected. Whoops at getting my seasons mixed up.
Though while searching around after my comment, I came across this page which lists Errey as a wearer of both 12 and 21 for the Wings, mucking things up a bit.
http://redwings.nhl.com/club/page.htm?id=44018
Also it appears Sillinger didn’t play a game for the Wings after Errey was acquired.
http://www.hockey-reference.com/players/s/sillimi01/gamelog/1995/
Holy shit, that is some excellent work, bud!
I’ve always held those links (HockeySweaterNumbers and Hockey-Reference) to be fairly reliable, but I can’t imagine that the Red Wings would err on their own site when it comes to something as easily verified as uniform numbers their players wore. And Bob Errey is, in fact, listed as the final wearer of #12.
I’m going to amend the Chart because, if nothing else, the Red Wings should be our number one source for information like this and not third party sites which — honestly — do a wonderful job, but are more likely to overlook something so minute than the team is.
Well done, sir.