Posted by Has the Brett Favre syndrome permeated into the NHL?
Do veteran NHLers come across like this?
Last year scrappy veteran Claude Lemieux decided that after a five-and-a-half-year absence he wished to attempt a comeback in the NHL. It was a success, if you consider only 18 games played with one assist a success.
At the beginning the this year’s preseason, 41-year-old Theoren Fleury made headlines by participating in the Calgary Flames’ training camp on a tryout basis. He was eventually cut and retired as a Flame. (You don’t think his comeback had anything to do with his tell-all autobiography that came out only a couple of weeks later?)
And now, just this past Friday, the 47-year-old Chris Chelios, hockey’s epitome of “the graybeard,” played in his first AHL game with the Chicago Wolves. The aged defenseman with 25 seasons of NHL hockey under his belt signed on Tuesday with the Wolves, the AHL affiliate of the Atlanta Thrashers.
Now granted, none of these NHL veterans put on the emotional circus of the Favre-magnitude. None of them had the same indecisiveness about playing as ESPN’s media darling. And none of them, to the best of my knowledge, participated in those horribly contrived Wrangler commercials.
But specifically focusing on Chelios, a three-time Norris Trophy winner and three-time Stanley-Cup champion, one has to wonder what else there is to prove for the future hall-of-famer. “I’ve got no goal, just keep playing,” Chelios said last week after skating with the Wolves for the first time. “I’m not going to come out and jeopardize this team’s success. It’s a challenge. I want to see if I can play.”
Evidently, Cheli can still play, at least at the minor league level. Despite the Wolves coming up on the wrong end of a 1-0 loss to the Manitoba Moose at Allstate Arena, he was the game’s No. 3 star. ”Physically, I felt as good as could be expected,” Chelios said. ”As a team we were concentrating on playing good (defense), and that took away from our offense at the end.”
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Chris Chelios won't we a Wing this year, but what about a return to the Blackhawks?
