Twenty-nine

Today is September 15, 2025, which makes it DetroitHockey.Net’s twenty-ninth birthday and the official start of its thirtieth season.

Normally I try to find something profound to talk about on the site’s birthday. I could use this space to gripe about difficulties I’m having with DH.N’s server but I know why that’s happening and what I need to do to fix it. Instead, I’m just going to talk about the anniversary logo (before some traditional jersey number geekery).

Given my interest in branding and this site’s history, it should come as no surprise that – much like the Red Wings with their 100th season and the Griffins with their 30th – DH.N has an anniversary season logo. I’ve made one every five seasons since the 10th.

I had a hard time with it this year. I really liked the simplicity of the 20th season logo and I think I’ve been chasing that. I kind of went back to that well for the 25th season logo and missed a little bit. As much as I love my roundel logos, I didn’t want to do one of those three anniversaries in a row.

For awhile I was working on something kind of similar to what the Griffins ended up doing, with the number 30 over a banner with the years 1996 and 2026 and the logo superimposed over the top of that. That’s so common though, so I shelved that.

I also looked at doing something with a more “vintage” color palate, which the Red Wings ended up using for their centennial logo. I guessed that they would do that, though, and decided to steer clear of it.

There are only so many ways to do an anniversary logo, though, and with those ruled out I kind of fell back on the “number in a shield” trope. Since DH.N’s primary logo is already a shield, I decided to lean into that and use the same shape but switch it up by adding beveling.

I wanted to work in either the site’s name or the deconstructed elements of the site logo, as are used in the site header, so “DetroitHockey.Net” arches across the top of the shield. A beveled number 30 takes up most of the space in the logo. A ribbon with the years – common on so many designs – cuts across the bottom of the shield with the site’s primary logo on top of that.

I almost implemented DH.N’s rarely-used circle alternate logo to avoid putting a shield in a shield but it didn’t look right to me.

I’ll admit that I’m not entirely happy with the final design but I don’t know what I’d do differently.

This is now DetroitHockey.Net’s anniversary logo history:

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My tradition on DH.N’s birthday is to take a look at the history of the jersey number that birthday represents, going back to the site’s founding in 1996.

In 1996, Mike Vernon was wearing #29, having claimed it from Aaron Ward upon joining the Red Wings in 1994.

Vernon was traded away in 1997 but the team didn’t assign the number again until March of 2000, when Todd Gill got the number to start his second stint with the Red Wings. Gill had worn #15 during his first run with Detroit but by 2000 Pat Verbeek was wearing it (his usual #16 still in the early days of semi-retirement).

Gill only wore #29 for one game. Two days later, he took to the ice wearing #23, which had previously been assigned to Stacy Roest, who switched to #39 for the remainder of the season.

Jason Williams was up next with #29. He signed with the Red Wings as an un-drafted free agent in 2000 and wore #73 in his first camp with the club. When he made his debut in November of that year, he was wearing #29. Williams kept the number until he was traded to Chicago for Kyle Calder at the trade deadline in 2007.

Mark Cullen was assigned #29 for his lone camp with the Detroit organization in 2007. He spent that whole year with the Grand Rapids Griffins and by the next fall the number was assigned to Ty Conklin, who signed with the Wings as a free agent that summer.

Conklin departed as a free agent in the summer of 2009 and Williams returned, reclaiming his number for a second run.

The next year, with Williams gone again, #29 went to Griffins-bound forward Jamie Tardif in training camp. Tardif had been assigned #67 in his prior camps with Detroit.

In 2011, Tardif left the organization and Conklin returned to Detroit, taking #29 again and wearing it for two more seasons.

Upon Conklin’s second departure in 2013, #29 was assigned to Landon Ferraro, who had been wearing #57 in camps. He’d debut wearing it at the end of the 2013-14 season and keep it until he was lost via waivers in November 2015.

Signed in the summer of 2016, Steve Ott was next up with #29, wearing it for his partial season with the Red Wings before being sent to the Montreal Canadiens at the 2017 trade deadline as part of the initial sell-off at the start of the team’s current rebuild.

By training camp in 2017, the number was assigned to Vili Saarijarvi, who had lost #28 to free agent signing Luke Witkowski (after having previously lost #71 to Dylan Larkin).

Saarijarvi then lost #29 to Brendan Perlini when Perlini was acquired from Chicago in October of 2018. A month later, Saarijarvi was traded for Eric Comrie, having never been assigned a new number. Less than three weeks after that, Comrie himself would be lost via waivers, an exchange I still don’t think I fully understand.

Perlini lasted the rest of the truncated 2019-2020 season with Detroit and by the time camps opened as the league returned from the COVID shutdown in 2021, free agent signing Thomas Greiss was #29. Greiss kept the number for his two seasons with the Red Wings.

Since Development Camp in 2023 #29 has been assigned to Nate Danielson.