After wearing No. 2 on the back of his jersey for each of his 446 regular season and playoff games with the Vegas Golden Knights, newly acquired defenceman Zach Whitecloud will switch to No. 28 with the Calgary Flames.

Whitecloud, 29, will become the 17th player to don those particular digits since the Flames franchise relocated to Calgary in 1980, and only the seventh this century. The most recent player to wear No. 28 with the Flames is fellow rearguard Nikita Okhotiuk, who appeared in nine games with the club to conclude the 2023-24 season.

The Flames acquired Whitecloud from the Golden Knights on Sunday afternoon as part of the Rasmus Andersson trade, in which Calgary also received defence prospect Abram Wiebe and a pair of future draft picks. The Brandon, MB product won the Stanley Cup with the Golden Knights in 2023 and is signed through 2028 at a $2.75 million cap hit.

The most notable Flames player to have worn No. 28 with the club is undoubtedly Robyn Regehr, whose tenure in Calgary spanned 11 seasons between 1999 and 2011. More recently, sharpshooting forward Elias Lindholm wore the number with the club from 2018 until his departure in 2024, scoring 148 goals and 357 points in 418 games over that span.

Whitecloud’s previous number is effectively off-limits in Calgary, where it is “honoured” — but not explicitly retired — for Conn Smythe Trophy-winning defenceman Al MacInnis as part of the team’s “Forever a Flame” program. The Flames have not issued No. 2 to any player since MacInnis announced his retirement in 2005, although it was worn by a handful of Flames players (most notably Mike Commodore) while MacInnis was still active with the St. Louis Blues.

MacInnis and Joe Nieuwendyk are the only two members of the “Forever a Flame” program, but Nieuwendyk’s No. 25 has frequently been issued to Flames players (including Jacob Markstrom and David Moss) in the years since his own retirement in 2006. Furthermore, Theoren Fleury’s No. 14 is neither retired or honoured by the Flames, but it has not been issued a single time (except to Fleury himself, during his attempted comeback in 2009) since the Flames traded him to the Colorado Avalanche in 1999. How confusing …

Between Regehr and Lindholm, three other Flames players wore No. 28 for vanishingly short tenures with the club: Lane MacDermid, Corey Potter, and Emile Poirier. Prior to Regehr’s time, the most prominent Flame to wear No. 28 was Paul Ranheim, who scored 94 goals and 194 points over six seasons with the club in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Whitecloud is expected to skate on a pairing with Kevin Bahl on Monday night as the Flames take on the New Jersey Devils at the Scotiabank Saddledome.

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