July 3, 2006

Email this Print this By HELENE ST. JAMES

FREE PRESS SPORTS WRITER
Red Wings captain Steve Yzerman most likely will announce his retirement this afternoon at 1 p.m. during a news conference at Joe Louis Arena.

Team owner Mike Ilitch will attend, a strong indication that Yzerman’s decision is to hang up his skates rather than to return for a 23rd NHL season.

Yzerman appeared ready to announce his decision May 1, the night the Wings lost to Edmonton in Game 6 of the first round of the playoffs. But three days later he appeared much more upbeat and clearly was wavering about what to do.

Since that time, coaches, friends and teammates have said the same thing about Yzerman: His desire is to keep playing, but he has had severe doubts about his physical ability to put his body through another 82-game season.

Yzerman turned 41 on May 9, but that in itself is hardly reason to step down – after all, teammate Chris Chelios, 44, has signed on for another season. But throughout much of his career Yzerman has been hampered by his right knee, and it got so bad he needed radical surgery on it in the summer of 2002.

That caused him to miss the first 66 games of the following season, but Yzerman recovered and played 75 games the next season, 2003-04. It’s possible he might have retired after that season, had it not been for how it ended – with Yzerman leaving Game 5 of the second-round series against Calgary bloodied in the left-eye area after getting hit by an errant puck.

“Steve wanted to leave on his own terms,” former teammate Gerard Gallant said. “He didn’t want to leave with those injuries.”

Yzerman used the lockout season, 2004-05, to rest and recuperate, but still had a frustrating start to 2005-06. A groin injury nagged throughout the season, to the point he contemplated retiring in December, admitting it was something he thought about every day.
He withdrew his name from consideration for the Canadian Olympic team, excluding the possibility of returning to help capture a second-straight gold medal. Instead he used the break to heal – and then came back a changed man.

Yzerman was one of the Wings’ best players down the stretch and into the playoffs, until he suffered a torn oblique muscle in Game 3. He returned for Game 6 and set up a goal in what likely will stand as his last game.

The Wings have a front-office job ready for Yzerman, as special assistant to general manager Ken Holland. Yzerman repeatedly has said he is not very interested in coaching, although he concedes it is the closest a player can come to retaining the exhilaration of playing.

If Yzerman retires, elite defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom is the logical choice to take over the captaincy. “It would be an honor if that happens,” Lidstrom said recently.