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. 

 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/

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.