Red Wings pro try-out Alex Chiasson didn’t play at all after being released from a PTO by the Boston Bruins last season, and he told the Hockey News’s Sam Stockton that there’s a good reason for his absence:
“Obviously, I went through quite a bit last year, and I decided that I wanted to give myself another shot and play,” said Alex Chiasson after this morning’s skate at Little Caesars Arena. “Obviously, really appreciated my time here in Detroit and in Grand Rapids.”
The 33-year-old joined the Red Wings—with whom he spent the 2022-23 season—for this year’s training camp on a Professional Try-Out contract. Chiasson knows he’s a long shot to crack the NHL roster, but he’s beaten long odds before. What he went through was hip surgery in January and a confrontation with the reality that his hockey career might be over. Now, he’s ready to make the most of his new lease on NHL life.
“I was able to manage [the pain] for a while,” he said, when asked how long the hip had been nagging him. “It just got to a point where life outside the rink was just not great.”
“If we go back maybe a year from today, I wasn’t sure where my career was at,” Chiasson reflected. “Thought maybe that was it for me. Hockey was hard physically, but just life in general wasn’t much fun. So went through the process and ended up getting surgery in January, and here we are today. [I’m] grateful for the opportunity to be here, obviously worked really hard to come back. It’s not easy at 33 to put in the work and all that, but you can only do this for so long, and hopefully I can show what I can do.”
