Bob Duff of the Windsor Star has an article up in the Ottawa Citizen in regards to the team’s first training camp without Yzerman since 1983. Most of the quotes in the article are from his former teammates Tomas Holmstrom and Kris Draper.

“I’ve been here for 10 years and he’s been around for what, 22 or 23 years?” winger Tomas Holmstrom wondered. “That’s amazing.

“Hopefully, he’ll come up and play some golf, so at least we can see him.”

“He was suffering a lot,” Holmstrom said. “He couldn’t play as well as he wanted to.

“There was a lot of pain that he was going through, especially with his (surgically repaired right) knee. You could see how much it hurt him.

“Before he had the bad knee, he could do so much with the puck. And even with the bad knee, he could be our best player still.”

Yzerman’s leadership influence will certainly be missed by the team.

“That’s the one thing you always knew,” centre Kris Draper said. “Through an 82-game season and playoffs, you were going to face adversity. And usually when we faced adversity, Stevie was the guy who stepped up and kind of calmed the waters.

“He was always a calming influence on us and we realize that we don’t have that this year.”