Who wore number 96 in NHL?

What number you wear can often be a big part of a player’s hockey identity. Some players care more than others about the number they don, but even for those who are indifferent to them, those numbers help connect players with young fans and can even have sentimental value. Like it or not, numbers are a big part of what can make this game great.

Mikko Rantanen

Mikko Rantanen is a Finnish professional ice hockey player known as the forward and alternate captain for the Colorado Avalanche of the National Hockey League (NHL). He was selected in the first round, 10th overall, by the Avalanche in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft.

Tomas Holmstrom

Bengt Tomas Holmström is a Swedish former professional ice hockey left winger who played his entire National Hockey League (NHL) career with the Detroit Red Wings, with whom he won four Stanley Cup championships; in 1997, 1998, 2002 and 2008.

During his playing career, Holmström was widely considered one of the NHL’s best at screening the opposition’s goaltender, as well as for his physical presence in front of the opposition’s net.

During his playing career, Holmström was known for his presence in front of the opposition’s goal and his ability to screen the opposing team’s goaltender. Because he had to withstand teammates’ shots towards goal, as well as efforts from opponents to vacate him from in front of the net, Holmström wore additional padding to protect his body. During a playoff series against the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2009, Detroit Head Coach Mike Babcock said of Holmström: “I think there’s defencemen out there who think they might actually get to him. That’s just not possible”.

Due to his obstructive playing style and close proximity to goalies and the crease, Holmström attained a reputation and was often charged with goaltender interference penalties as well as occasionally having goals called back because of his proximity to the goaltender’s crease. Holmström himself, as well as Red Wings TV announcers Mickey Redmond and Ken Daniels and various national hockey pundits, often questioned the legitimacy of these calls by the on-ice officials.

Holmström was known to many fans in Detroit by the nickname of “Homer”. He acquired the nickname “Demolition Man” while playing in Sweden, where he was also called “Holma”.

Pierre-Marc Bouchard

Pierre-Marc Bouchard is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player. Bouchard played his junior hockey with the Chicoutimi Saguenéens in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL), and is the older brother of Austrian Hockey League player François Bouchard. Bouchard was selected eighth overall in the 2002 NHL Entry Draft by the Minnesota Wild and has also featured in the National Hockey League (NHL) with the New York Islanders. He is the cousin of P. A. Parenteau.

Pavel Bure

Pavel Vladimirovich Bure is a Russian former professional ice hockey player who played the right wing position. Nicknamed “the Russian Rocket” for his speed, Bure played for 12 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) with the Vancouver Canucks, the Florida Panthers and the New York Rangers. Trained in the Soviet Union, he played three seasons with the Central Red Army team before his NHL career.

Selected 113th overall in the 1989 NHL Entry Draft by Vancouver, he began his NHL career in the 1991–92 season, and won the Calder Memorial Trophy as the league’s best rookie before leading the NHL in goal-scoring in 1993-94 and helping the Canucks to the 1994 Stanley Cup Finals. After seven seasons the Canucks traded Bure to the Panthers, where he won back-to-back Rocket Richard Trophies as the league’s leading goal-scorer. Bure struggled with knee injuries throughout his career, resulting in his retirement in 2005 as a member of the Rangers, although he had not played since 2003. He averaged better than a point per game in his NHL career (779 points with 437 goals in 702 NHL games) and is one of the leading players all-time in goals per game. After six years of eligibility, Bure was elected into the Hockey Hall of Fame in June 2012. In 2017, an NHL panel named Bure one of the 100 Greatest NHL Players in history.

Internationally, Bure competed for the Soviet Union and Russia. As a member of the Soviet Union, he won two silver medals and a gold in three World Junior Championships, followed by a gold and a silver medal in the 1990 and 1991 World Championships, respectively. After the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, Bure competed for Russia in two Winter Olympics, claiming silver at the 1998 Games in Nagano as team captain, and bronze at the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City. Following Bure’s retirement in 2005, he was named the general manager for Russia’s national team at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. Bure was later recognized for his international career as a 2012 inductee in the International Ice Hockey Federation Hall of Fame.

Bure’s playing style reflected the speed, skill and puck possession that was prominent in Soviet Union hockey programs. The most prevalent aspects of his game were his skating speed, agility, and acceleration, which earned him his nickname the “Russian Rocket”. He was able to use his quickness to separate himself from defenders, to retrieve pucks before the opposition could in all zones of the ice, and to skate the length of the ice on many occasions. In a 1993 poll of NHL coaches conducted by hockey writer Bob McKenzie, Bure was named the league’s best skater with eight of twenty-one votes, twice as many votes as any other player. One coach noted: “Bure has the best combination of speed, agility and balance … He can also use change of speed better than anybody in the league right now”.

During Bure’s rehabilitation period, following his first major knee injury in 1995, Canucks’ conditioning coach Peter Twist noticed that his skating style was distinct in comparison to typical North American players. He explained: “Most players skate on their inside edge and push off at a 45-degree angle, but Bure starts on his outer edge and rolls over to his inside edge and pushes back straighter on his stride … he gets more power and force in his stride to get up to top speed quicker”. His skating was also complemented by his ability to deke out defenders and goaltenders at top speeds, making him capable of routinely starting end-to-end rushes. However, several knee injuries, and the resulting reconstructive surgeries, compromised the speed that defined Bure’s game, ultimately leading to his retirement.

Early in Bure’s career, he was noted for playing a strong two-way game. Having joined Pat Quinn’s defensive-minded Canucks in 1991, Bure’s transition to the NHL was cited as being easier than that of his countryman, Igor Larionov, due to his quick adjustment to the team’s defensive demands. Regarding Bure’s first NHL game against the Winnipeg Jets, reporter Mike Beamish explained that “hockey fans marvelled at his offensive thrusts, but hockey people were taken by a singular display of jet-powered defensive diligence. On one play, after the Canucks were caught deep in the Winnipeg zone, the Russian winger raced back and almost single-handedly foiled a two-on-one Jets’ rush, making up a half-rink disadvantage”.

Bure was used on the team’s penalty kill for his entire tenure with the Canucks, and was proficient at generating shorthanded chances, pressuring the opposition with his quickness and positioning in the defensive zone. During the 1992 Stanley Cup playoffs, commentator and ex-NHL coach Harry Neale said: “I like the effort he gives it when he doesn’t have the puck. We all know what he can do when he thinks he can score, but he’s killing penalties, he’s checking, doing a lot of things”. Bure tied for second-place on Bob McKenzie’s 1993 coaches poll for the NHL’s best penalty killer. He was also voted the league’s second-best stickhandler that season and garnered recognition as one of the smartest players in the NHL.

Sports journalists Damien Cox and Stephen Brunt wrote about Bure during the 1994 Stanley Cup playoffs that he was a “two-way dynamo”, accounting for “several bodychecks he handed out on the night” and for his defensive abilities as he stayed on the ice in the last minutes of a one-goal playoff match against the Toronto Maple Leafs. They spoke highly of his creativity as well, recognizing him as “someone who sees in his game a world of possibilities that just never occur to others”, praising his “sheer elegance and imagination” and characterizing his hockey sense as “ho-hum brilliance from the most explosive player in the sport”.

Brunt called him “a nonpareil, a van Gogh, a Picasso, a Charlie Parker”. During the 1993-94 season, Bure demonstrated his strong playmaking abilities, helping linemate and friend Gino Odjick score a career-high 16 goals in a single season, more than twice the number of goals Odjick would score in any other year separated from Bure, and doubling his career goal totals up to that point in his career. According to teammate Cliff Ronning in 1994, “we play a much sounder game defensively when Pavel’s flying, as he was in the first period”. Former Canuck teammate Jyrki Lumme spoke of Bure as a player and teammate: “That guy does something spectacular every time … it’s frustrating to go against him in practice because he’s all over the place. He makes everybody on our team better”.

During his time with the Canucks, Bure won the team’s Most Exciting Player Award, as voted by the fans, five times, from 1992 to 1995, and once more in 1998. Trevor Linden, who had played with Bure for seven seasons, said following Bure’s retirement: “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen or played with a player that’s brought people out of their seats like that”. During the 1994 Stanley Cup Finals, Rangers coach Mike Keenan, who later coached Bure for one-and-a-half seasons in Vancouver, called him “perhaps the most electrifying forward in the league”. The Canucks renamed the award the Pavel Bure Most Exciting Player Award in his honour in 2013.

Bure has been described as a pure goal scorer and is statistically among the top players in NHL history in that regard. In addition to having reached the 50-goal mark in his career five times, and the 60-goal mark twice, his .623 goals per game average is leading among the top 100 goal scorers in NHL history. Michael Farber of the Montreal Gazette described Bure as “the most dangerous scorer in the National Hockey League with the continued absence of Mario Lemieux because Bure can beat a defence with his speed, his strength, his mind. Bure isn’t a scorer as much as he is a permanent late-night television guest; he is to highlight packages what Terri Garr is to Letterman”.

Anders Bjork

Anderson Patrick Bjork is an American professional ice hockey player known as the left winger for the Buffalo Sabres of the National Hockey League (NHL). Bjork was selected 146th overall by the Boston Bruins in the 2014 NHL Entry Draft.

Bjork played college hockey at Notre Dame in the Hockey East from 2014 to 2017. In 2016–17, Bjork was a finalist for the Hobey Baker Award, marking him as one of the few best players in men’s college hockey; he was also named a Hockey East First-Team All-Star, and was a co-winner of the Hockey East Three-Stars Award.

At the completion of his junior season with the Fighting Irish, Bjork concluded his collegiate career in signing a three-year, entry-level contract with the Boston Bruins.

Bjork’s NHL career started with the 2017–18 Bruins season opener, a 4–3 home ice victory over the Nashville Predators, when he scored an assist on fellow Bruins rookie Jake DeBrusk’s first-ever NHL goal, for his first point as an NHL player. Bjork’s first NHL goal came in the fourth game of the season on the road against the Arizona Coyotes, as the final goal of a 6–2 road win for the Bruins.

During a home-ice game against the visiting Anaheim Ducks, Bjork suffered a season-ending left shoulder injury – he underwent a successful arthroscopy and labral repair three weeks later, and was expected to take six months to fully heal from the surgical repair.

In the pandemic delayed 2020–21 season, Bjork collected 2 goals and 5 points through 30 regular season games before he was dealt by the Bruins on the eve of the trade deadline along with a 2021 second-round draft pick to the Buffalo Sabres in exchange for Taylor Hall and Curtis Lazar.

Adam Gaudette

Adam Gaudette is an American professional ice hockey player known as the center for the Ottawa Senators of the National Hockey League (NHL). He previously played for the Vancouver Canucks and Chicago Blackhawks. Gaudette played college hockey with the Northeastern Huskies of the NCAA, where he won the Hobey Baker Award, Hockey East Player of the Year, and was named to the AHCA East First-Team All-American. Selected by the Vancouver Canucks in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft, he made his NHL debut with the team in 2018.

Gaudette made his NHL debut on March 29, 2018, in a game against the Edmonton Oilers. As the Canucks failed to make the post season, he only appeared in 5 games.

After attending Canucks training camp prior to the 2018–19 season, Gaudette was reassigned to their American Hockey League affiliate, the Utica Comets. However, his stint in the AHL did not last long as he was called up to the NHL after playing in four games for the Comets, where he tallied two goals and two assists. He earned his first career NHL point, assisting on a Darren Archibald goal, the only Canucks goal scored in a 4–1 loss at the Arizona Coyotes.

He scored his first NHL goal, scoring the first Canucks goal in a 4–2 victory at the Los Angeles Kings. Despite being expected to spend most of the season developing in Utica, injuries to Canucks centers resulted in Gaudette appearing in 56 games for Vancouver. Gaudette ended his rookie season with five goals and seven assists, generally playing center on Vancouver’s third line.

Gaudette made Vancouver’s 2019–20 season roster out of training camp; however, he was reassigned to Utica, after playing in only three of Vancouver’s first nine games. After being recalled, Gaudette responded by scoring six goals and ten points, solidifying his spot in the lineup. Gaudette ended the COVID-19-shortened 2019–20 season with 12 goals, 21 assists, and 33 points in 59 games. Gaudette played in 10 of Vancouver 17 playoff games, going pointless.

Gaudette re-signed with Vancouver on a one-year, $950,000 contract.

After the conclusion of the contract, he was traded by Vancouver to the Chicago Blackhawks for Matthew Highmore. He signed a one-year contract extension with the Blackhawks.

The following day, after being placed on waivers by the Blackhawks, he was claimed by the Ottawa Senators.

Yegor Korshkov

Yegor Alexeyevich Korshkov is a Russian professional ice hockey forward known for playing with Lokomotiv Yaroslavl in the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) on loan while under contract to the Carolina Hurricanes of the National Hockey League (NHL).

Korshkov made his Kontinental Hockey League debut playing with Lokomotiv Yaroslavl during the 2014–15 KHL season.

In the 2016 NHL Entry Draft Korshkov was chosen 31st overall by the Toronto Maple Leafs. Korshkov was scouted out by Evgeny Namestnikov, the same scout who tipped the Leafs off on Nikita Soshnikov a year earlier.

In the 2018–19 season, Korshkov recorded 3 goals and 5 points thorough 19 games before collecting 3 assists in 9 playoff games. Korshkov signed a two-year, entry-level contract with the Maple Leafs, immediately joining AHL affiliate the Toronto Marlies, in the midst of their playoff run.

During the 2019–20 season, Korshkov continued in the AHL with the Marlies before he was recalled by the Maple Leafs to make his NHL debut, and subsequently scored his first NHL goal on a game against the Buffalo Sabres.

Korshkov then was traded along with David Warsofsky to the Carolina Hurricanes in exchange for Alex Galchenyuk.