In Hockey, It's All About The Hot, Hot "C and A"

photo courtesy Legends Of Hockey
It's not easy to admit your vices, or, in my sorry case, addictions.

I'm addicted to the intricacies of professional sports uniforms. And amateur sports uniforms. And just about anything having to do with sports uniforms anywhere. I'm a hopeless devotee to the geekiest sports blog on the Internets (it's a series of tubes!)---Uniwatch. So, it being a slow hockey news day and me being obsessively addicted to "athletics aesthetics", I decided to browse the various archived photos of the Stanley Cup winners at Legends of Hockey.

I found some interesting variations in the assignment of the Captain and Alternate Captain letterings. I first noticed something strange in the team photo for the 1995-96 Avs (also pictured above). There are four alternate captains. I know three of them are Curtis Leschychyn, Sylvain Lefebvre, and Adam Foote, but I'm unsure of the fourth guy. At any rate, four seems like an excessive number, considering the standard in the league is two.

But that's not the only strange instance of "C and A" that I've found. The 2000-01 Avalanche had three alternates: Ray Bourque, Adam Foote and Peter Forsberg. The 1988-89 Calgary Flames had two captains: Lanny McDonald and Jim Peplinski. The 1985-86 Montreal Canadiens had three alternates, the first year that designation officially existed in the NHL, which is why the 1984-85 Edmonton Oilers have only captain Wayne Gretzky wearing a letter on his jersey.

That's just the Cup winners. Who knows what kind of weird variations of captains and alternate captains have existed in the 20 seasons since both designations became standard uniform attire? As just one example, I know some teams have gone captainless in recent years (the Penguins). I wonder what the maximum number of alternates has been, and on what team? Anybody know?