July 4, 2006

BY HELENE ST. JAMES

FREE PRESS SPORTS WRITER

A fan pours champagne on Steve Yzerman after the Red Wings won the 1998 Stanley Cup over Washington. It was the second of his three titles. (JULIAN H. GONZALEZ/Detroit Free Press)
For years, teammates sat in the same locker room as Steve Yzerman and watched this superman. Like the man of steel, Yzerman seemed invulnerable, able to eclipse the limits of human endurance. In Yzerman's case, able to will his team to victory.

Yzerman's legend was nurtured through a 22-season career that befits a man who will go down as one of hockey's greats: three Stanley Cups, an Olympic gold medal, trophies that recognize his immense contribution to the Red Wings.

"He's meant everything to this team," goaltender Chris Osgood said. "Just from watching him from afar and being here, it's his presence in the room. He always makes the team better. Guys just naturally work harder when they're around him. His leadership will be missed huge."

Yzerman announced his retirement Monday, nine weeks to the day after he played his last game. The finale was vintage Yzerman: He had a torn oblique muscle and shouldn't have played, but his team trailed the Oilers, 3-2, in the first-round series, so he gave it a go. The Wings lost the game, but not before Yzerman set up a goal, squeezing one last play out of his worn hands.

That is a snapshot of Yzerman on the ice. But a man isn't defined solely by his work, and off the ice, there is an Yzerman that has been far less visible. He has, by many accounts, a bitingly funny wit, one that can leave teammates howling with delight.

"If there are some conversations going on, chances are, if he's got something funny or something sarcastic to say, he's going to throw it out there," forward Kris Draper said. "He's quick. He's witty."

Yzerman appears stoic, but those close to him see so much more. Take what happened in 1986, when he was named the youngest captain in franchise history at the tender age of 21.

"It was sort of a shock to him, but he handled it with class," former teammate Gerard Gallant said. "He was pretty excited, but he didn't show it much -- that's just the way Steve is. He doesn't show a lot of emotion."

Throughout his career, Yzerman often kept his counsel private. He was almost traded twice -- to Buffalo in 1992-93 by Bryan Murray, and again in the summer of 1995, shortly after the Wings were swept by New Jersey in the Stanley Cup finals. Scotty Bowman, then serving in a role as coach and director of player personnel, nearly shipped Yzerman to Ottawa. But fans undid the deal: During the 1995-96 home opener, the crowd at Joe Louis Arena gave Yzerman a thunderous standing ovation -- and any thought of ever again dealing Yzerman died that night.

That year marked a turnaround for other reasons. A team that had suffered through ignominy in the 1980s was on the rise, and the series against the Devils left Yzerman and the Wings on the cusp of success. Two years later came the first Stanley Cup in 42 years. In 1998, the Wings once again claimed the championship, and Yzerman took home the Conn Smythe Award as playoff MVP after producing 24 points in 22 games.

From Yzerman, it was a typical performance.

"We've seen, over the years, that he's real determined," defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom said. "I've seen that the whole time I've been here, him stepping up, especially in the playoffs and playing real well for us. He's a great captain. He leads by example, especially in the playoffs, the way he goes out and battles, plays hard. He doesn't say a whole lot, but when he says something, I think the whole team listens to him."

For 22 seasons, teammates watched Yzerman prepare for games, watched how he played even when he needed painkillers to do so. Just being around him, day in and day out, had an impact.

"You walk around the dressing room, guys have become better players, better people from playing with Stevie as long as we have," Draper said. "That's probably the ultimate compliment for Stevie, is how he's basically led this hockey club. He's just been so reliable."

* * *

In 1982-83, the Red Wings had 2,500 season-ticket holders. The team was terrible -- 21 victories that season, 21 the season before, 19 in 1980-81. Into this mess came, on draft day in 1983, a young man named Stephen Gregory Yzerman.

Jimmy Devellano, then the general manager of the team and now a senior vice president, originally wanted Pat LaFontaine, but when the Islanders took LaFontaine with the third overall selection, Devellano went with Yzerman, and a legend began to take shape.

The two men joked shortly after the draft about their goals, about how Yzerman would play until he was 35 and win five Stanley Cups. But back then, Devellano wasn't even sure Yzerman would start the following season with the Wings. He wasn't imposing physically, and there was a general inclination that he needed another year of junior hockey.

"But two shifts into camp," Devellano said, "and we knew he was our best player."

Yzerman scored in his NHL debut, Oct. 5, 1983, and went on to produce 38 more goals in 1983-84. He became the youngest player in NHL history selected to the All-Star Game when he played for the Campbell Conference on Jan. 31, 1984, at 18 years, eight months and 22 days.

Yzerman led all NHL rookies with 48 assists and 87 points and was second with 39 goals. He had points in 62 of 80 games. He was runner-up for the Calder Trophy, given annually to the league's top rookie, losing out to Buffalo goalie Tom Barrasso.

Buoyed by Yzerman's play, the Wings won 31 games in 1983-84. But without enough complementary players around him, more futile seasons lay ahead, with Yzerman flourishing while the team floundered. Yzerman produced 59 assists and 89 points his second season, and 42 points in 51 games in 1985-86, when he missed 29 contests because of a broken collarbone. He rebounded with 90 points in 80 games the next season, and 102 points in 64 games in 1987-88.

In 1988-89, he scored 65 goals and had 90 assists, producing a career-high 155 points in 80 games, and followed that up with 62 goals and 127 points in 1989-90.

By all rights, Yzerman was a superstar of the game. But his prime coincided with Wayne Gretzky's superhuman performances for the Edmonton Oilers, and then with the equally amazing achievements of Mario Lemieux and the Pittsburgh Penguins. While Yzerman was a lone star in Detroit, Gretzky and Lemieux had supporting casts that propelled their teams to one championship after another. Fair or not, Yzerman played in their shadows.

"I think we've had the pleasure of watching one of the greatest players to ever play the game," general manager Ken Holland said. "I think that, unfortunately for Steve, when he was really offensive, in the early '90s, the Pittsburgh Penguins were the best team in the league with Ron Francis and Jaromir Jagr and Paul Coffey, and in the '80s, Gretzky was there putting out the points with (Mark) Messier and Coffey and (Jari) Kurri, and their teams were winning."

It took until the mid-'90s before the Wings took shape as a team that could challenge for the Stanley Cup. In 1993, Scotty Bowman arrived, and though the 1994 playoffs ended with a first-round loss to San Jose, it was considered a stunning upset because this no longer was the team nicknamed The Dead Wings or, worse still, The Dead Things.

Bowman had a great impact on the Wings, but on no one more so than Yzerman. It was under Bowman's reign that Yzerman morphed from a supernaturally gifted offensive player into one of the best two-way forwards ever.

"I think it evolved because the team got better," Bowman said. "When he first was there, he was the whole team and he was a scoring machine. Then as he got older, the team added some ingredients, so he didn't have to score all the time. He became a very good defensive player. He knew what he had to do to improve the team. Somebody had to do it. That's basically what he did. He was very focused on playing two-way hockey. It hurt him production-wise, but he'd produced before. I think he knew what he was doing."

In 2000, Yzerman was recognized with the Selke Trophy as the NHL's top defensive forward. In Detroit, though, the transformation had yielded results starting in 1997, when the Wings ended a 42-year drought and won the first of back-to-back Stanley Cups. In Holland's eyes, it wouldn't have happened without Yzerman changing his game.

"I think, by his commitment and his sacrifice, over that time, one- to two-year period, that really was the beginning of the Detroit Red Wings being as successful as we have been in the regular season and allowing us to win three championships," Holland said.

Yzerman continued to produce impressive offensive numbers into the late '90s, even as the league became much more oriented toward defense. As late as 1999-2000, he had 79 points in 78 games. But injuries, especially involving his right knee, came to define his next three seasons.

Yzerman first severely injured his right knee in 1988, and the knee never fully healed. It required arthroscopic surgery on Oct. 16, 2000, and this time, Yzerman was out 22 games. In 2001-02, Yzerman missed 30 regular-season games because of the knee. But he found the strength to help Team Canada win a gold medal at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, and then gutted it out for 23 playoff games, averaging a point a night, to help the Wings win another Stanley Cup on June 13.

But within two months, Yzerman was back on an operating table.

In August of 2002, he underwent an osteotomy, a realignment procedure so radical that there was no guarantee he would be able to play again. This time, it took 66 games to recover, but on Feb. 24, 2003, Yzerman returned to the ice at Joe Louis Arena to a thunderous ovation. Once again, Yzerman had accomplished something almost superhuman.

* * *

Last summer, as Mike Babcock prepared to take over coaching the Wings, Bowman passed on a tantalizing piece of information about Yzerman.

"I just told Mike, a few times during the year, this guy is going to surprise you," Bowman said. "You can never write him off."

There never was a better example of this than during the 2001-02 season. Yzerman's right knee ached daily. He missed stretch after stretch of games. Somehow, he willed himself to play in Salt Lake City. He returned to Detroit in so much pain that he wasn't able to play again until the last game of the regular season.

Then came the playoffs. The Wings faced Vancouver and lost the first two games. What happened next is part fairy-tale ending, part heroic lore. Before Game 3, Yzerman gave a speech, but it was what he did afterward that really struck teammates. Yzerman had a goal and an assist; the Wings won the game, the series, and eventually, the Stanley Cup.

All this from a man who could barely stand erect.

"The one thing that we're going to keep talking about is what he had to do in 2002," Draper said. "Not only what he did for Canada in the Olympics, but then he comes back and look at what he did for us in the playoffs. That's probably one of my greatest memories. We're down, 2-0, and he just nonchalantly and casually addresses the team. Next thing you know, we go out and win four straight. That's how legends are made.

"There are times he got knocked down and he had to lean on his stick to get up. He couldn't just stand up. But he had so much desire to win, and that's what makes him so great."

There are other examples: Yzerman's impassioned speech during the 1997 playoffs, when the Wings were tied with St. Louis, 2-2, in the first round, and another upset loomed. Yzerman's double-overtime goal in Game 7 of the second-round series against St. Louis in 1996.

Yzerman, really, throughout his career.

"His strong suit is he's ultra-competitive," Bowman said. "He is not going to accept half-measures. In 2002, players saw what happened to him with his knee and found out that he was going to play again and saw how he played. If he did that, how could they not do it?"

Through the years, Yzerman has become the team's all-time leader in playoff scoring. He ranks first in assists. He scored 692 goals, and his 1,755 points rank sixth all-time. He racked up milestone after milestone, and those around him rarely knew it until it happened.

"For a guy who's accomplished so many things, he never talks about it," Osgood said. "When he gets records during games, you don't even realize it until they announce it over the loudspeakers in the arena. He's never really been a guy who's thought about what he's accomplished -- what the team has done has been more important to him. It shows what type of character player he is and the leader that he is."

Yzerman's leadership changed through the years, as he did. But long after he ceased to be the best player, teammates responded to him.

"He's not a rah-rah guy like a lot of people may think a captain should be, but he definitely calms people down," forward Kirk Maltby said. "You come in after a bad period or a good period or tied going into overtime, he definitely can keep a dressing room focused. A lot of guys can say the right things, but he also goes out and does them. As a player watching him, especially later on in his career with all the injuries he's had, and the pain he's had to play through, you just see what he's done through the injuries, you know you have to go out there and do it yourself."

Yzerman came to the Wings as a gangly youth blooming with promise. In 23 years, he grew far greater than his slim, 5-foot-11 frame, performing feats worthy of a superhero. Everyone has a tale to tell about him -- with Draper, it's the 2002 playoffs, with Babcock, it's seeing how Yzerman has touched the lives of children worn down by cancer.

To Yzerman himself, it's been two decades of highlights.

"I did the best I could," he said at his exit news conference. "I tried hard, I competed hard. I feel like there's nothing left in the tank, and I'm comfortable with that."