Globe and Mail article
February 1, 2007
by Eric Duhatschek
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The perfect metaphor for Steve Yzerman — and the player he eventually turned into - came in the days leading up to the National Hockey League’s 1983 entry draft when Yzerman wasn’t sure about the team that would ultimately select him, and they weren’t exactly sold on him either.

The Red Wings — otherwise known as the Dead Things or the Grey Wings in those sad-sack days — owned the fourth overall pick that year. They coveted a youngster from the Detroit area, one Pat LaFontaine, on the grounds that they needed to rebuild both their team and their franchise and that a local boy might help meet twin needs, on the ice and also in the marketing department.

The New York Islanders, thanks to a selection they’d received in trade, were picking No. 3, just ahead of Detroit. The Islanders were Yzerman’s favorite team and Bryan Trottier his favorite player. Yzerman thought it would be “awesome” to play for them. The Red Wings, back in the spring of 1983, would have been happy to see that happen.

Of course, life rarely unfolds the way it’s supposed to. The Isles ended up selecting LaFontaine instead. The Red Wings, as a consolation prize, settled for Yzerman, a gangly quiet kid from that junior hockey factory, the Peterborough Petes.

You know the rest of the story.

Yzerman turned pro as an 18-year-old and produced 87 points in his rookie season, helping the Red Wings make the playoffs (after they’d managed only 21 victories and 57 points the year before). Yzerman produced six consecutive seasons of 100 points or more, beginning in his fourth NHL season, as the Red Wings morphed from league laughingstock to competitive NHL franchise. The fact that they didn’t win in the 1980s had more to do with the opposition — the Gretzky-led Edmonton Oilers were playing in their conference — than the turnaround in Detroit, which occurred mostly under the watchful eye of Jacques Demers.

The Red Wings were a good, competent NHL team by then that couldn’t quite get over the top — or couldn’t until they brought in the legendary coach, Scotty Bowman, in 1993. Yzerman and Bowman clashed a little in their early days together, but Yzerman eventually bought into what Bowman was selling — that a strict commitment to two-way hockey would better serve his ultimate goal of winning a championship than posting all those gaudy statistical seasons. Yzerman’s numbers gradually fell off in the Bowman era, but their team results were spectacular. Yzerman never did have another 100-point season after 1993-94, but the Red Wings won a record 62 regular-season games in ‘96 and then followed with Stanley Cup victories in ‘97, ‘98 and ‘02 — leaving Yzerman one short of the number Gretzky produced in his career, but one ahead of Mario Lemieux, the two centres from his peer group that mostly kept him from winning Hart Trophies and achieving end-of-season all-star status during the prime years of his career.

When Yzerman officially announced his retirement last July after 22 seasons (20 as the team’s captain), he left as the sixth-leading scorer in NHL history and the eighth-leading goal-scorer of all time (he had 692 in 1,514 games, Mark Messier 694 in 1,756 games).

Like Messier, Yzerman became known as the consummate team leader in his latter years. Unlike Messier, he did it in a more understated, low-key way. It wasn’t so much his vocal skills that made him a leader of men; it was the way he prepared and then played the game. I asked him once about his leadership style back in 2000 for my book Hockey Chronicles and he answered: “People look for the rah-rah stuff, for the outpouring of emotion, for the fiery quotes in the paper, but that’s not what makes someone a leader. It’s about the willingness to pay the price, to compete harder than the other guys.”

That capacity to compete harder than the other guys made Yzerman unique as a player. He played inspirationally through a painful knee injury to help Canada win Olympic gold in 2002. He worked as hard as the members of the team’s so-called Grind Line (Kris Draper, Darren McCarty, Maltby), but played the game with a higher ability level. It made him the consummate professional. The fact that he didn’t ask his teammates to do anything that he wasn’t prepared to do himself provided the Red Wings with an invaluable leader, someone that could pull all parts of a disparate, multi-national team together.

Once, in the early days of the Bowman era, the Red Wings briefly entertained the notion of trading Yzerman to his hometown team, the Ottawa Senators, in exchange for a young Alexei Yashin. They thought better of it and ultimately reaped the rewards of their decision.

Yzerman, meanwhile, became one of a handful of NHL players that ended his career in the same place it began — in Detroit, with a Red Wings’ team that soon grew to appreciate all the things, obvious and subtle, that he did for them. Yzerman acknowledged that he didn’t know much about Detroit when he first arrived. He learned about their history early on, whenever Gordie Howe or Ted Lindsay dropped by the dressing room. In the end, he contributed greatly to that history, which is why Jersey No. 19 was raised to the rafters on Tuesday night at Joe Louis Arena, culminating a remarkable career that began as an awkward coupling - and ended up as a marriage made in heaven.