NHL.com article
April 5, 2007
by Shawn P. Roarke

Red Wings’ great Steve Yzerman is one of the most-respected players in the NHL’s long history.

Steve Yzerman didn’t need a Stanley Cup championship to be considered a great player and leader.

But the Stanley Cup he won in 1997, and the two that followed in 1998 and 2002, certainly didn’t hurt Yzerman’s Hall of Fame-worthy resume.

In fact, those titles most likely turned a quiet star and exceptional leader in Detroit into an international hockey icon. Even Yzerman acknowledges the role those championships play in the perceptions about him.

“If you play well and win, you’re a heck of a leader,” he once said. “You don’t win, you’re an OK leader. If you don’t play well and you don’t win, you’re a lousy leader.”

Suffice it to say that Yzerman was never a lousy leader during his 20-year stint as the Red Wings’ captain, a tenure that ended with his retirement at the end of the 2005-06 season. From the time he took the fabled “C” as an untested 21-year-old in his third NHL season, to the time the organization raised his sweater in the ultimate tribute earlier this season, Yzerman led his team the only way he knew how — with a dizzyingly intoxicating mixture of passion and compassion.

“Stevie Y’s” teams didn’t win much early on. During Yzerman’s first 11 years with the club, the Red Wings only ventured past the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs on two occasions.

Yet those in the know around hockey understood that the Red Wings were building something special in Motown. They also knew that the quiet, yet intense, Yzerman would be at the forefront of the coming renaissance.

St. Louis Blues center Doug Weight was one of those people. Growing up in Warren, Mich., Weight was a diehard Wings’ fan as a kid. He identified with Yzerman as the team tried to find its way through the NHL wilderness. When the Wings finally emerged on the other side of their futility, Weight had found his own way to the NHL.

Still, Weight followed the fortunes of Detroit, despite the fact that he already played for the New York Rangers and was, at the time, in Edmonton. Weight was still with the Oilers in 1997 when the Red Wings finally won the Cup. Although Weight was jealous that he was not hoisting the Cup, he admits he enjoyed watching an on-ice rival lift that trophy up high and light up the arena with a smile that reflected the completion of a long-and-difficult journey by Yzerman.

“When Stevie won it, I was in the League by then,” Weight says. “It was pretty cool to see them win it because they had some lean years. Being a Red Wings fan growing up, that was probably the first personalization of the Cup, I think.”

At the time, Weight had intimate, first-hand knowledge as a player of how long and trying the quest for the Cup can be. But, he also had the more common emotional understanding of the every-day fan.

And virtually every current NHL player hailing from the Detroit area has gone through the same identification process that Weight discusses so eloquently.

Tim Thomas, a 32-year-old goalie from Flint, Mich., patrols the crease these days for the Boston Bruins. But as a youngster back home, such heroics were the furthest thing from his mind, he says.

“I grew in Michigan, so the Red Wings are there,” Thomas explains. “Way before they won a Cup, I remember watching the Stanley Cup Playoffs. That was my first time that I saw it and the first time that I started to think about it.”

What Thomas saw, especially from the inspirational center wearing No. 19, formed the basis for many of Thomas’ childhood dreams and fantasies.

“I was Steve Yzerman winning the Stanley Cup in the garage 10 years before he actually won it,” Thomas says today.

That is the power of Yzerman; power that was legitimized and solidified the very first time he accepted that hallowed championship trophy from NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman back in 1997.

Once Yzerman joined hockey’s most exclusive club – Stanley Cup-winning captains – he became a hero for hockey fans everywhere, not just in Detroit. Suddenly, it seemed almost overnight in many quarters, everyone understood how special a player, and a person, this Yzerman guy was.

Late in his career, Yzerman was revered as much by opposing fans as he was by the Detroit crowds. Players across the League also understood they were in the presence of greatness. Today, it is impossible to find anyone with a bad word to say about Yzerman.

And, even though he is now done as a player — having moved seamlessly into management in Detroit — Yzerman’s legacy of skill and class remains, serving as inspiration to a new generation of players.

Edmonton center Jarret Stoll, 24, was still in diapers when Yzerman took his first twirl around a NHL rink. Yet Stoll now worships at Yzerman’s alter.

“Anybody that wins Cups and is a leader is looked upon as a very important player to their team. Not only (with) their team; he is a pretty well-respected throughout the League. With him retiring, his last game was here in Edmonton and that was pretty special to play against him in his last game.”