Beer - I, too, would be happy to see Chelly up in the rafters; after all, he spent ten years with the Wings, and frankly, I just love the guy. According to what I read on the Freep page this morning - May called and asked Chelly if it would be o.k. if he (May) wore #24 and Chelios said it would be fine, no problem.

Just an observation here: the family has switched from cable to the
AT&T "U-Verse" set-up for t.v. and internet and we've found that we can get several hockey games a week - including the Red Wings. The other day I was cruising to see what was on and I found a "Classic
Hockey" game on one of the channels - Chicago Blackhawks were playing the Red Wings at the old Olympia. WOW! Howe, Lindsay, Delvecchio(sp), Hull, Hall, Mikita were all playing and the year was 1965. There were several interesting things to observe about the game but the stand-out feature was the complete lack of helmets and/or face masks except for one player - and he was a very young forward.

Kelly and I noticed that there was not a lot of fighting and what fighting did occur was brief and not so intense as it can be today.
We discussed it and concluded that if the players of today didn't have so much body protection they may not play quite as aggressively and might just be not so quick to start a fight; but, then again?

Cheers from Hockeytown South,...............................mwh