Red Wings Announce New Player Jersey Numbers

The Detroit Red Wings announced jersey numbers for some of their new players via social media on Thursday afternoon.

New guys, new numbers! pic.twitter.com/JwRS11Ts9w

— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) August 28, 2025

Some of those were obvious. With #36 available, it could be expected that John Gibson would take his usual number. Same for James van Riemsdyk and #21.

Mason Appleton got his #22, which was to be expected, but the team didn’t announce a new number for Shai Buium, who wore that number in camp last fall.

I was certain that Jacob Bernard-Docker would get #24, with Auston Watson switching to the #51 that became available with Eemil Viro returning to Europe. Instead, JBD takes #25.

That doesn’t preclude Watson from switching. As we already saw, Buium needs a new number and the team didn’t announce it so maybe they deliberately left off a change for Watson.

However, I do think that if Watson was taking #51 and Bernard-Docker was taking #25, Travis Hamonic would be going with #24. Instead he’s going with #52.

The team did not announce numbers for summer signings Ian Mitchell (who I expected to take #14) or John Leonard (who I was spitballing would get #44 or #90).

I failed to mention it previously but I do wonder if we’ll see Dominik Shine wearing #65 in camp now that he’s signed with the Red Wings instead of the Griffins.