On the Wings

Remember the father/son trip to the southeast last December? Well Chris Chelios is giving it another try, but this time with his older son, 16 year old Dean, on this 4 day road trip to western Canada

In the southeast father/son road trip, Dean couldn’t tag along with his dad and younger brother, Jake, because of his own hockey schedule (he plays for Cranbrook who recently won a DIII state championship). Since his high school hockey season just ended and this is his spring break, Chris Chelios asked head coach Mike Babcock and GM Ken Holland if he could bring Dean along on this trip (answer: yes).

Since Dean was born the summer after his dad played in the 1989 Stanley Cup Finals in Montreal, he’s been growing up with his dad playing in the NHL. However, this trip is giving him a new perspective on the NHL & Wings (much to the jealousy of his Cranbrook teammates). On Friday night, he went to dinner and then a movie with the team. He even got to pick the movie, The Hills Have Eyes. Following the movie, the team returns to the hotel where Dean got to sleep in his own room, “a luxury usually reserved for 10-year NHL veterans who have played 600 or more games.”

“There’s not too many players that can say their kids are old enough to be able to do this,” said Chelios, 44, the NHL’s oldest active player. “And just in case, if I don’t play next year, at least he’ll have been able to do this once.”He’s a laid-back kid, almost to the point where it drives me crazy. But I can tell (he’s excited). He never gets up in the morning at home, but he’s gotten up two mornings in a row now on this trip.”

“My other son plays like I play — he’s a knucklehead,” Chelios laughed. “I don’t know how the new NHL rules are going to help him, but Dean is perfectly suited for it. He’s a goal-scoring demon.”

Again on Friday, he played a 20 minute game of “keep-away” with Pavel Datsyuk, his favorite NHL player. The next day he “spent an extra half-hour on the ice working on shooting and skating drills with assistant coach Paul McLean and Chris Osgood, among others.” While Dean certainly isn’t at the level of an NHL player, he is already three inches taller than his dad at 6′2″. Unlike his dad, he plays forward (left wing or center).

“I haven’t been on one of these (road trips) in a long time, since I was maybe five years old, so I didn’t know what to expect,” he said. “But it’s just awesome - better than I expected. It’s amazing. This has just been really fun.”