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All right, it's time for a little soul cleansing as the Stanley Cup final looms like the backside of Tomas Holmstrom.
Much as you hate to admit it, Detroit Red Wings defenceman Chris Chelios is no longer the evil incarnate you once thought him to be.
He doesn't grow fangs when he steps onto the ice. He doesn't carry a scythe instead of a hockey stick. He's not the sweetest man to play the game, but this season, as he and the Red Wings carried themselves toward another Cup final appearance, Chelios has seemed, dare we say, more respected and more likeable?
Yes, we dare say that, and more.
Having survived 24 NHL seasons, with an eye toward a 25th, Chelios has undergone a transition from hellraising defender to revered veteran. Fans still taunt him with signs that read "I hope you break your hip" or "My grandmother needs a date," but most observers readily acknowledge how well Chelios plays and how remarkably resilient he's been, even at the age of 46.
"I'm listed day-to-day, but I'm ready to go," he said of the leg injury that kept him out of the Western Conference-winning game against the Dallas Stars on Monday. "I'm ready to resurface."
Honestly, the man has done more resurfacing than a Beverly Hills dermatologist. He was supposedly finished when he played for the Chicago Blackhawks a decade ago. Every year since then, the hockey world has looked at Chelios and wondered: "Is this guy ever going to retire?"
But why quit when things are going so well?
Last year, Chelios earned lavish praise for taking on Ted Saskin and helping lead the National Hockey League Players' Association revolt against an executive director who had allegedly been accessing the players' private e-mail accounts. This season, Chelios has been nominated for the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy, the NHL's award for perseverance and - wait for it - sportsmanship.
Chelios's hilarious shtick in a three-minute movie short with Samuel L. Jackson (revisiting his Jules Winnfield character from Pulp Fiction) as his youth hockey coach resurfaced on YouTube to howls of delight. Hockey fans, even Chelios bashers, were quick to laud him for his sense of humour, which is especially wry when it comes to his upbringing and how improbable his hockey career has been.
"I've always said there's no reason in the world I should have ended up playing in the NHL," said Chelios, who recalled how his family once spent time in that hottest of hockey hotbeds, Australia.
"My dad had the harebrained idea during the Vietnam War that we should go into business in Australia. All of us went and we were going to supply the troops with dairy and meat [products].
"We took every one of our possessions with us. My dad even took our '68 Cadillac. It was a 21-day boat trip.
"We got there, only to have the war end."
Chelios likes to joke about how he was cut by two Ontario Junior B teams and ran out of cash on the bus ride home to Chicago. Stuck in Detroit, Chelios had to borrow money from a couple of strangers. Turns out they were the guys who owned the farm where the plane carrying members of the rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd had crashed in 1977.
"I got their names and address and mailed them back their money," Chelios said. "My dad was pissed at me for getting cut."
Eventually, Chelios caught on with the Moose Jaw Canucks of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League, but only after he got the coach's telephone number from a friend while surfing in California. On his first shift with the Canucks in the 1979-80 season, Chelios scored a goal. True to form, he soon added a fight.
"That was my first fight in hockey," he said. "The coach wanted to know how tough I was, so I showed him."
Chelios has kept at it all these many years, except that now he's not nearly as irascible or obnoxious as before. Instead, the guy who was once jumped by Philadelphia Flyers goaltender Ron Hextall has become the cagey professional and the heady defenceman, and even he has noticed a change in how opposition fans treat him.
"I'm not as hated as I was in a lot of buildings," Chelios said.
"Some of that's because I don't play against the other team's top players any more. I'd be chasing other guys and playing the way I was allowed to if I was in that role and playing 25 minutes [a game], but I'm not. The game's changed and now I'm a role player and a penalty killer. I've got to be smart."
Smart and dedicated enough to be nominated for the Masterton. What's next? The Lady Byng Memorial Trophy?
