I still have yet to hear a good reason not to honor them.
I get why not to hang their jerseys, but why not honor them?
Was reading through looking for a playoff bandwagon thread of sorts and stumbled across this thread. Jersey retirements/honouring are always interesting to me.
In my opinion there are many ways you can honour a player or person. The Leafs honour numbers, still hang them from the rafters, still leave the number in circulation (exception of two). You could hang Rypien's and Snyder's numbers from the rafters without retiring them.
Pittsburgh also has a ring of honor with Michel Briere as a poster previously mentioned and Mario retired.
The Toronto Blue Jays have a level of excellence with numerous players honoured there with one number (Alomar) retired.
I think it would be a nice touch to have their numbers raised to the rafters among other things you could do to honour them. It's not going to harm anyone and it would look incredibly classy on the organization to do so.
As far as debating Jets 1.0 history and what to do with certain numbers from that era and who "owns" the history always annoyed me. You guys are the fans who watched Hawerchuk and Steen and Selanne and etc. You are the fans with the memories or 76 goals. Not the Coyotes. Regardless of who says who owns what, it's the fans with the memories of watching these players growing up who own that history. The Jets 1.0 history will forever lie where it belongs. In Winnipeg.