Chris brings a great deal of experience and passion to the rink every day. He's been a great Red Wing, he's in excellent shape, and no matter what his age, you know he can play at a very high level.

He had a passion since he was a little kid to fly.

We like our nucleus, the core of young players we have. We'd like to build something here. We want to be in position to add in the future, when the ages of unrestricted free agency goes down.

I negotiated from May 2004 to early September 2004 with them and we were so far apart at that point in time that I guess I was figuring if we picked up where we left off we were a long ways apart, ... We'll see what happens.

Given our recent history with groin injuries, they tend to take a little longer than you think. We've had players come back, feel OK, and then re-injure themselves.

Our feeling is, he'll be out for a period of time. Certainly, I don't anticipate him playing Thursday, for sure.