Shelley is in Nova Scotia for the weekend, where Friday night he will be one of the inductees into this year's class of the Nova Scotia Sports Hall of Fame. The body honors those who have made a significant contribution to sports in the province.
It's fair to say the former CBJ enforcer fits the bill. After moving to the Yarmouth from Western Canada at 12 years old, he spent three seasons from 1995-97 with the province's Halifax Mooseheads of the QMJHL, racking up 48 goals and 933 penalty minutes in 181 games while becoming one of the most popular players in franchise history. He then bounced around the minors before ending up in the Blue Jackets organization in its inaugural season of 2000-01.
That year, he played 69 games with AHL Syracuse but just one game with Columbus, making his NHL debut Feb. 17, 2001 with Pittsburgh. He got five shifts and picked up 10 penalty minutes for fights vs. Steve McKenna and Krzysztof Oliwa -- in the first period of his NHL career.
He became a full-time Blue Jacket a year later and went on to play 380 games with the team, totaling 11 goals, 29 points and 1,025 penalty minutes. Shelley was then traded to San Jose before finishing his career with stints in New York and Philadelphia.
Since retiring, he's become an ambassador for the Blue Jackets franchise and the color analyst for the team's broadcasts on Fox Sports Ohio. One of the most popular payers in franchise history, he continues to be one of the faces of the team both on the air and in the community.
But for one night, he'll be home for a deserved honor. That also means a shakeup among the FSO crew, as Jean-Luc Grand-Pierre will take over as the color analyst for the game braodcast and Dave Maetzold will take Grand-Pierre's spot on the desk during the "Blue Jackets Live" pregame show.
The
Hockey Fights Cancer Night
game against St. Louis begins at 7 p.m., with the pregame show kicking off at 6:30.
