OT-Chris Chelios back with the Wings

Submitted by weasel3216 on

Sorry if this got posted and i just missed it but Chris Chelios is back with the Red Wings.  His position in the organization is up in the air still, but the article (http://www.mlive.com/redwings/index.ssf/2010/08/chris_chelios_joins_red_wings.html) says that he could be doing anything from helping Babcock to just learning about the front office positions.  Glad to have him back and still cracks me up that he said that he would never play for Detroit and now he is joining our front office.   

umhero

August 7th, 2010 at 9:07 AM ^

Funny story about that; my brother and I went down to the Big Ten basketball tournament in 1998 at the United Center.  We had no tickets and planned to scalp seats.  We arrived at the end of the first game hoping to catch some people leaving because their team lost who had bought tickets for the weekend.  I'm pretty sure Iowa lost the first game and their fans came streaming out.  While we only intended to buy two tickets by the time the crowd had dispersed, we had bought 100 tickets for less than $5 each (we offered $5 but some people just gave them to us).

Our windfall changed our plans for the weekend.  Since we were now going to become ticket brokers ("we're not pimps, we're love brokers), we needed to make a plan.  We went to Cheli's Chili Bar to assess our opportunity. 

Sitting at the bar, we couldn't get away from all of the Chris Chelios pictures staring at us.  The bartender arrived and we were shocked; it was a women who was the spitting image of Chris Chelios (he doesn't make an attractive woman). 

Certain that this was his sister, we engaged her in conversation about her brother.  We joked with her that the Wings always get the best players, so it was inevitible that he would end up in Detroit.  We asked her if she would open a Chili bar in Detroit when her brother joined the Wings?  She flipped out, she told us he would never play for Detroit, that he hated Detroit and there would never be a Cheli's chili bar in Detroit.

During our visit she warmed up to us and ended up helping us sell 20 of our tickets.  Before we left we told her we'd see her in Detroit.  She said she'd never come to Detroit.

Chelios became a Wing the following year and now has two Cheli's chili bars in Detroit.  I've been to both several times but never seen his sister.