Red Wings to Retire Sergei Fedorov’s Number in January

The Detroit Red Wings announced on Tuesday that they will retire the #91 of Sergei Fedorov when they host the Carolina Hurricanes on January 12, 2026.

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— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) August 19, 2025

While no player has worn the number since Fedorov left the Red Wings for the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim as a free agent in 2003, the team has emphatically rejected the idea that the number was formally retired.

That said, when Brad Richards came to Detroit in 2015, he wore #17 because he wasn’t allowed to wear his usual #19 (retired for Steve Yzerman) or #91. Similarly, Vladimir Tarasenko wore #11 last season, having been denied #91.

When the Red Wings chose to retire the #4 sweater of Red Kelly during the 2018-19 season, the #retire91 hashtag picked up steam on social media. The team itself teased this announcement by sending a tweet featuring that hashtag at 7:00 AM on Tuesday before deleting it shortly thereafter.

Fedorov’s number has existed in a state similar to that of Larry Aurie’s #6. Aurie’s number was retired by Red Wings owner James Norris in 1938 before being de-listed from the team’s retired numbers in the early 2000s. Despite that, when Mike Modano requested to wear #6 for the 2010-11 season (his usual #9 being retired for Gordie Howe), he was not allowed to and ended up wearing #90.

Additional unofficially-retired numbers for the Red Wings include Pavel Datsyuk’s #13, which Jakub Vrana was not allowed to wear. Calvin Pickard wore #31 instead of his usual #30, last worn by Chris Osgood. Vladimir Konstantinov’s #16 is famously out of circulation, though the last player to come to Detroit having previously owned that number was Brett Hull in 2001. It is assumed that Henrik Zetterberg’s #40 is unavailable but the team hasn’t brought in a player who usually wore that number since Zetterberg’s retirement.

Fedorov’s #91 will be the team’s ninth formally-retired number, joining the aforementioned #4, #9, and #19, as well as Terry Sawchuk’s #1, Nicklas Lidstrom’s #5, Ted Lindsay’s #7, Alex Delvecchio’s #10, and Sid Abel’s #12.