Would the NY Islanders or any NHL team ever unretire a jersey number?

New York Giants 2024 first-round pick (6th overall) Malik Nabers wore No. 9 throughout the NFL preseason, but it was widely known that once the team announced their initial 53-man roster, Nabers would select a different number to wear during his rookie season. As Nabers' jersey is expected to be a best-seller, Big Blue fans anxiously awaited the number the dynamic receiver would be wearing when the Giants host the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday, Sep. 8, at MetLife Stadium.

Would the NY Islanders or any NHL team ever unretire a jersey number?

On Wednesday, we got our answer with an unexpected twist. Nabers will be wearing No. 1, which the franchise retired for Ray Flaherty, a Pro Football Hall of Famer who won an NFL Championship with the Giants in 1934. Fans' reactions were mixed. Flaherty last played for the team nearly 90 years ago. He isn't a household name, even amongst die-hard fans, and the news introduces him to a younger generation of the fanbase. On the other hand, unretiring a number is rare, and doing so for a rookie who's never caught an NFL pass in a regular season game is a bold move for a franchise to make.

That got us thinking: Under what circumstances would the New York Islanders or any NHL team unretire a jersey number? NHL history tells us that a retired jersey number would take an extraordinary circumstance to be re-issued. Mario Lemieux's No. 66 was retired by the Pittsburgh Penguins when "Super Mario" returned and reclaimed his jersey number. That makes perfect sense. The Winnipeg Jets had retired the No. 9 of Bobby Hull, and when the franchise relocated to Phoenix, the Coyotes kept No. 9 until Bobby's son Brett joined the team at the end of his career during the 2005-06 season. The Coyotes stopped retiring numbers held over from Winnipeg when they became the Arizona Coyotes, and now the franchise has relocated to Utah. There's also the mysterious case of Larry Aurie and the Detroit Red Wings. The number was technically retired, then issued to his cousin, then wasn't raised to the rafters when other Red Wing players were years later.

It's hard to fathom another No. 22, No. 5, or No. 19 on the ice for the Islanders, regardless of the extraordinary circumstances. The franchise, or any NHL franchise, would never issue it to a rookie, irrespective of how highly touted he is coming out of the draft. The Islanders already have a unique case where their current captain, Anders Lee, wears No. 27 as it hangs from the rafters for John Tonelli. Lee earned the right to keep his number, but Vladimir Malakhov switched his number from 23 to 92 when the team honored "Mr. Islander" Bob Nystrom in 1995. Perhaps if Lee hoists a Stanley Cup as captain, his No. 27 will be raised next to Tonelli's the same way Andy Bathgate and Adam Graves share space in the rafters of Madison Square Garden with their No. 9's.

So, is there any circumstance where it is even slightly imaginable that a retired Islanders' number would be re-issued? Maybe, just maybe, there is one, but it would take an established star on a Hall-of-Fame trajectory 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 phoned Bryan Trottier?

I want to think that under that circumstance, the incoming star would have too much respect for an Isles legend or that ownership would intervene and take it off the table. Still, you never know, and as impossible as it seems now, maybe in 40-50 years, it won't be.