"The Numerical Decision"

Recently, I've had the tough decision of choosing a number to wear on the back of my Emerson College hockey jersey as I come out of retirement this fall.  As I stated in a previous post, I've never worn the same number twice (7, 24, 33, 10, 17, 96, 41, and 66) and plan to continue that trend this season.  There has been a lot of speculation and information from "sources" regarding what number I've chosen.  I've read rumors of me wearing 67 or 29.  I've received a lot of suggestions from many people too.  My girlfriend Jillian, as well as a secret commenter named Anonymous, think I should wear 5.  More ideas include TheNorm41 and my pal Gannon suggested 14 because it's 41 (my favorite number) backwards and Shanny used to wear 14 for the Wings, plus my dog is named Shanny.  Liam suggested threve.  Baroque suggested pi.  Andy suggested 9, 19, 25, or 92.

With eight previously worn numbers off the board, plus 16, 18, and 62 already taken by members of Emerson's team, it left me with 88 different numbers to choose from.  First, I decided to eliminate the obvious numbers that I personally refuse to wear.  That meant that 87 was out the window and I had to say goodbye to any number that Mikael Samuelsson wore, so 26 (Vancouver), 37 (Detroit/Pittsburgh/NY Rangers), 11 (Panthers), and 28 (Sharks) were all eliminated.

I thought about my the suggestions I received and my favorite Wings' players too.  The obvious number choices when it comes to Red Wings are 9 and 19, but I really didn't want to wear those numbers.  In the past when I've picked a number because of a Wing, I never picked the obvious, most popular Wings' number.  I've picked 33 and 96 for Draper and Homer.  There was a big push by Jillian for 5 and it made sense.  As a defenseman, I'm a huge Lidstrom fan (in the future, my first born son's name will be spelled Nicklas). 

In the end though, I did choose a Wings' number and my choice makes a lot of sense (to me at least).  So without further ado...

In this fall...this is very tough...in this fall I'm going to take my talents to downtown Boston with the Emerson College Lions hockey team and wear the number...



...TWO!

Two made the most sense (props to Rob from Wings Win, Eh? for coming the closest to guessing in the comments section).

The reason?

It's Brendan Smith's number with the Red Wings!

He wore 7 in college at Wisconsin and I've already worn 7.  I figured he wears #2 with the Wings and I named my blog after him, so why don't I wear his number too.  Plus, I used to love Jiri Fischer when he played for the Wings and he wore 2 as well.  And we're all defensemen.  It just seemed like a fitting choice. 

So stay tuned this fall for my on ice debut as #2 with the Emerson College Lions hockey team.  I plan to update the team's progress as well as my own statistics this season here on the blog.

Lets Go Red Wings (and Emerson College Lions)