Detroit Free Press Staff

Legendary Red Wings defenseman Chris Chelios has written a memoir, "Made in America," with collaborator Kevin Allen from USA TODAY Sports. The Free Press will run excerpts from the book (Triumph Books, $25.95, 272 pages) today and Monday. Its official release comes in November. In the first excerpt, Chelios reflects on the turmoil of his life after his stunning 1999 trade from the Blackhawks to the Wings.

First of two excerpts:

I had famously said once in a television interview that I would never play for the Detroit Red Wings.

I meant it when I said it. That's how deep the rivalry was between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Red Wings.

When I settled into my hotel room after being traded to Detroit — on March 23, 1999 — that interview was being played on the local news. I'm sure it was played over and over in Chicago. Blackhawks fans remember that interview and never forgave me for agreeing to play for the Wings.

I'm not sure I can really blame them.

In my defense, it was not easy for me to walk into Detroit's dressing room for the first time. It was like crossing enemy lines. I had tussled with Wings captain Steve Yzerman a few times during my career, and Sergei Fedorov had been a frequent target of mine. A few years before, the NHL had fined me $500 for slashing him.

"I used to do everything to Sergei," I told Sports Illustrated writer Michael Farber. "Those were the days when you could elbow a guy and not worry about getting suspended. I took advantage of that."

Farber pointed out in his story that I had previously been "hanged in effigy" by some fans at Joe Louis Arena.

The first time I dressed to play for the Wings, I had to do it twice because I had forgotten to remove my gym shorts the first time. Then, I mistakenly put on my elbow pads before my shoulder pads. To say I was out of sorts would be an understatement.

My presence in the dressing room was also odd for my new teammates, many of whom had fought me like gladiators through the years. It was pretty awkward for all of us.

On my first day, tough guy Darren McCarty picked up one of my sticks and said, "This is the first time I've ever been this close to one of these without it being broken over my head."

On my second day in Detroit, rugged Wings forward Marty Lapointe came up to me and asked, "Are we going to be OK?"

I just laughed. I think he believed we should apologize to each other for all of the bad blood we'd built up over the years.

The one player I did apologize to was center Kris Draper. I had said some mean things to him in the past. After he was hurt by that Claude Lemieux hit from behind in 1996, his mother threatened to file a lawsuit against Lemieux. Not long after, Draper and I were both stretching before one of our games, and I leaned over and called him a bad name and suggested he tell his mother to stay out of it.

I had also uttered stupid comments to defenseman Larry Murphy about dyeing his hair that I regretted saying. I don't recall whether I apologized to Murph about those comments, but I should have. In the heat of battle, you say dumb things. Now, Murphy and I are great friends.

There was a buzz in Detroit about the Wings at that time, and not just because I was now playing for the team. Ken Holland had also acquired goalie Bill Ranford, defenseman Ulf Samuelsson, and feisty scoring winger Wendel Clark. All the players were on the ice 15 minutes early for the first practice with the new group.

The Wings were now considered the team to beat for the Stanley Cup. After the roster makeover, Las Vegas oddsmakers were now making us a 2-1 favorite, down from 6-1.

According to news reports, the Wings sold 171 jerseys with my name or Clark's name on the back the day after the trades were announced.

Many fans in Detroit came up to me and said, "We used to hate you but now we love you."

The Wings used the "left wing lock" defensive system at the time, and that was less taxing on defensemen. As a right-side defenseman, I no longer had to make the long diagonal skate to the left corner to get the puck on an opponent's dump-in. The left wing had the responsibility of retrieving the puck in those instances.

Legendary head coach Scotty Bowman had the Wings playing a puck-possession game, so I had more freedom to join the rush under his command. In fact, I was supposed to jump into the play on certain breakouts, and I forgot a couple of times in my first few games. In Chicago we moved the puck from defenseman to defenseman and then fired it up the boards.

My minutes were trimmed in Detroit, but in a good way. In my last three games in Chicago, I had averaged more than 30 minutes a game. In my first three games in Detroit, I averaged just under 25 minutes.

The first time I stepped on the ice for a warm-up in a Wings jersey, the fans stood and applauded. Apparently they were quick to forgive and forget.

Truthfully, I was pretty pleased to be joining a team that had an established captain such as Steve Yzerman. Given what I had just gone through in Chicago, I was happy to just concentrate on hockey and not dressing room politics.

Yzerman was an intimidating presence, even among the veteran players. If we lost a game, there wasn't a guy in the room who would make eye contact with Yzerman. Even at my age, 37, I had a healthy fear of him.

Once, in front of the entire team, Yzerman called me out after Paul Kariya had scored an overtime goal to beat us. On the play, I had left Kariya alone to try to help Yzerman.

"Stay with your (expletive) guy," Yzerman told me.

I didn't much like how he opted to bring that to my attention. I had always made it a point never to embarrass a teammate.

The next day I told Yzerman how I felt about his approach.

"If you don't like what I'm doing, just pull me aside and talk to me about it," I said.

To Yzerman's credit, he did apologize. But I respected how much he cared about how the team played. He was a great captain and a great player. He just wanted me to do my job. I understood that.

And I loved playing for Scotty Bowman. I liked how he used me, and he didn't treat me as if he believed I was at the end of my career.

From my time in Montreal, I know the Scotty who coached me wasn't the same Scotty who coached the Canadiens in the 1970s. The guys who played for Scotty then considered him the toughest, meanest SOB they'd ever met.

"But you won five Stanley Cup with Scotty," I said once to Hall of Famer Larry Robinson.

"Yeah, but we should have won 10," Robinson said.

Bowman clearly had softened by the time he landed in Detroit. He was quite a character. He would walk in and ask you a question but then wouldn't stay around to hear your answer. You'd be in mid-sentence and see him walking out the door. I guess he wasn't all that interested in what we had to say.

One time, he must have overheard a conversation about my Greek heritage or read about my father coming from Greece, because he walked up to me and said, "So you are an immigrant, eh?"

"Actually, I was born in the United States," I said. "You were born in Canada, so I think that makes you the immigrant."

I thought that was a snappy comeback, but Scotty didn't hear it because he was already back in his office by the time I opened my mouth.

I found Scotty quite entertaining, and he was awesome at handling our very talented team.

It wasn't Bowman's style to confront players individually. He made his points by the way he played guys or what he said to the entire group.

Early in my time in Detroit, Bowman was talking to us about our recent games, and he said he no longer wanted to see "any of that stuff after the whistles."

He never mentioned me by name, but he was clearly talking to me. From that point on, I didn't do anything like that in a Detroit jersey. I respected Scotty too much to defy him.

Although it was definitely strange to see myself on television highlights wearing a Wings jersey, I knew that eventually the feeling would pass and I could get back to just being a hockey player.

The worst night came on the last night of the regular season when I played my first game for the Wings in Chicago's United Center.

The fans booed me every time I touched the puck. I know I should have expected that reaction, but to be honest it was unnerving. That was when I realized the depth of anger the Chicago fans had worked up for me. They saw me as a traitor.

Bowman didn't put me on the ice much after the first period. Finally, he told me to leave the bench and go hang out with Michael Jordan, who had come to the game to see me.

"All you are doing is getting the crowd into the game," Scotty said.

Per Scotty's instructions, I dressed and watched the third period with Jordan in a suite. My old team wound up beating my new team, 3-2.

Jordan had my back, telling everyone, "I'm not here for the Blackhawks. I'm here for Chris Chelios. I don't like how they treated him."

That was nice of MJ to say, but as I mentioned, I didn't have any ill will toward the Hawks.

My first Wings playoff experience didn't go much better for me than my Blackhawks regular-season experience. It started well enough when we swept the Anaheim Ducks in the opening four, and then won the first two games of a second-round series against the Colorado Avalanche.

Riding a six-game winning streak, it looked as if we had a good chance to become the first team since the New York Islanders to win three Cups in a row (1980-83). But the Avalanche stunned us by beating us four in a row to knock us out of the playoffs. Just like that, it was over.

Then a strange thing happened. After the final team meeting, I returned to the hotel where I had been living since coming to Detroit. Given how fired up I was about my summer routine, I should have been out the door headed home in an hour's time.

Instead, I stayed in that hotel room for three straight days.

I had never known depression in my life until those three days. I was simply overwhelmed by what had happened over the previous few months. I was angry, sad, conflicted, listless, and lost. I lacked purpose. I didn't seem to know what to do next.

On the third day, my wife Tracee called and asked, "Are you coming home?"

She snapped me back to reality. That's when I realized how upset I truly was about the trade. It was the start of a slow climb toward understanding how traumatic the move from Chicago to Detroit had been on my life.

If there was one misconception I wish I could have cleared up at that time, it was that moving from the Hawks to the Wings was easy for me. I think some people thought I didn't care which jersey I pulled on, that I just packed up my gear and went about my life like I had just changed a pair of socks. That couldn't have been further from the truth.

That summer was the worst summer of training I ever had during my NHL career. I didn't start to feel normal again until just before camp, after I had gotten my family settled in the Detroit area. Even then, I looked at Detroit as a temporary stop, just a place to pass through until I could return to Chicago. It seemed inevitable that I would be working for the Hawks organization when I was done playing.

As it turned out, neither general manager Bob Murray nor I was around for the Blackhawks' rebuilding effort, one that took much longer than anticipated. He was fired eight months after I left, with Bob Pulford returning to his former job as general manager. The Blackhawks only made one playoff appearance between 1998 and 2008.

Never in a million years would I have thought that I would play longer in Detroit than I played in Chicago.

Then again, who would have guessed that I would be 47 when I played my last game in Detroit in 2009? Nor would I have guessed that I would still be living in Detroit 16 years after the trade that changed my life.

In Monday's Free Press: How the 2002 team, loaded with future Hall of Famers, relished its Stanley Cup.

This excerpt from "Made in America" by Chris Chelios with Kevin Allen is printed with the permission of Triumph Books. For more information, visit www.triumphbooks.com/ChrisChelios.

READ ALL ABOUT THE WINGS

Red Wings fans will have no shortage of reading material this fall.

Besides "Made in America," Chris Chelios' memoir with Kevin Allen of USA TODAY Sports, which will be released in November, "Mr. Hockey: My Story" will be released Tuesday. It is Gordie Howe's memoir.

To read a Free Press' look last month at "Mr. Hockey" (G.P. Putnam's Sons, $27.95, 242 pages), go to freep.com/wings.

Also this month, Triumph Books has issued two other Wings books — "100 Things Red Wings Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die" by Allen and Bob Duff ($14.95, 307 pages), and the paperback version of "Gordie Howe's Son: A Hall of Fame Life in the Shadow of Mr. Hockey" by Mark Howe with Jay Greenberg ($15.95, 320 pages).

Mark Howe, like Gordie and Cheli, played for the Wings and has been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Mark, like Cheli, works in the Wings' front office.

To read a Free Press excerpt last year from "Gordie Howe's Son," also go to freep.com/wings.