Detroit Free Press interview
November 8, 1983
by Bill McGraw

Steve Yzerman is so young, he remembers scoring his first goal as if he scored it yesterday. Actually, he got it about 13 years ago, while playing his first season of organized hockey in western Canada. It was not a pretty sight.

“I couldn’t even stand up (on skates),” he said. “I had fallen down in front of the net. Their guy banked it off one of their guys’ skates and into the net. I was lying there, and I got credit for it.”

How times have changed. Yzerman (pronounced EYE-zer-man), the Red Wings’ first-round pick (fourth overall) in last summer’s amateur draft, has begun his rookie season in superb fashion. He is quick, smart and sometimes sensational on the ice. With eight goals and eight assists, he ranks first among rookie scorers.

He is centering the Wings’ top line, and is as responsible as anyone for the club’s fine start, which has drawn huge, enthusiastic crowds to Joe Louis Arena. As the first player drafted by general manager Jimmy Devellano, Yzerman appears to be a fine cornerstone for a rebuilt franchise.

AND HE IS DOING all this at age 18, just a few months out of high school. Born May 9, 1965, Yzerman is one of the NHL’s youngest players, and he is easily the baby among Detroit’s major league pro athletes.

But his age is deceiving, because Yzerman acts 18 going on 28. To the adults he deals with daily, he is a fellow adult, an old pro with a kid’s face.

“He came into camp low-key,” said teammate right winger Danny Gare. “He listens a lot. He takes a lot in. You see him watching things. He was very confident, but very quiet.”

“He’s got tremendous poise,” said Brad Park. “And tremendous natural ability.”

YZERMAN’S FATHER, Ron, a social worker who is director of welfare services for the Canadian government, said Steve always has been a bit older than his age.

“He just sort of developed a sophistication, and probably matured a little quicker,” Ron Yzerman said. On Steve’s hockey- playing trips as a youth, Ron said, the family would do more than watch hockey. They would visit the towns “to see how other people lived.

“That sort of contributed to his socialization,” said Ron. As a child, Steve defused a potentially touchy family situation, Ron recalled, when he refused to flaunt his hockey ability after it had surpassed that of his older brother, Mike.

“He never said, ‘I’m better, I deserve the better skates,’ that sort of thing,” said his father. “I think it was a conscious decision on his part.” “He thought of other people ahead of himself,” said Lottie Garvey, who has been housing hockey players in Peterborough, Ontario, for 11 years. Yzerman lived with the Garveys for two years while starring for the Peterborough Petes junior team.

“He always took his plates to the sink.”

Yzerman was born in Cranbrook, British Columbia, where the family’s favorite NHL club was the Red Wings. They moved to suburban Ottawa while Steve was still in grade school.

IN DETROIT, Yzerman shares a suburban home with fellow rookie Lane Lambert, 19. At 18, Yzerman says he is still the small-town kid from Cranbrook, Ottawa and Peterborough, no matter how many goals he scores, no matter how much he captivates the big city.

“I just plan on being the same way,” he said. “I don’t plan on changing . I hope people like me and appreciate me the way I am.”