Sport Express Daily article
July 14, 2006
By Slava Malamud
Up to a point, Detroit was a place relatively little known in Russia, and one might wonder now whether it is still remembered as fervently as just years ago. Try to find out and you will see it is known not only – far less, for that matter - for being the U.S. carmaking center than for one thing people might think is only for insiders – Detroit Red Wings.
Despite rising interest recently in the resurgent and aggressively marketed Russian ice hockey league, many people still remember the Red Wings as the most loved hockey team of their teenage years, and still wear winged-wheel baseball caps bought from some mysterious and doubtless counterfeit seller in a downtown undercrossing. They stick to red and white when they watch hockey, drink to Vladimir Konstantinov’s recovery and remember their first “hey, they also have Red Wings overseas” astonishment.
Admittedly, this is mostly because the Wings’ Russians – Vyacheslav Fetisov and Igor Larionov who, together with Konstantinov, Sergei Fedorov, and Vyacheslav Kozlov, formed The Russian Five greatly revered for the sporting pride they brought to Russia – were the first to raise the Stanley Cup on Red Square. Well, you might also think it was because the first Russian tennis star Anna Kournikova’s name was also somehow associated with Detroit… To be sure, a Russian could hardly like Detroit without being a hockey fan. This is a not a “show city” – it is a mass of concrete and iron, a city that works.
Now it’s time to learn more about Detroit’s true sporting idol. No, not the Russians. Not even the Detroit longtimer Scottie Bowman but the man who was not there for a show. The man that worked. The man whose nickname was the same as his job description – The Captain – and whose retirement last month marked the end of an era which many Wings fans call Stevie Time. Steve Yzerman.
NHLPA.com article
July 14, 2006
“We’ve been through a lot together. There’s no place to play that you get this kind of treatment, respect and adulation.”
– Steve Yzerman
When a player that has recorded nearly 1,800 points announces his retirement, you would expect a collective cheer from his rivals. Not so when the player in question happens to be Steve Yzerman.
For three decades, he made even the best in business look like amateurs, scoring goals, setting them up, or preventing them in every conceivable fashion.
So why, some 22 seasons after his National Hockey League career began, are fellow players sad to see Yzerman hang up his skates?
Because few NHLers in the history of the game are as beloved as the class act from Cranbrook, British Columbia.
