As a bona fide star, Yzerman, with the help of a coaching legend, began his quest for the Cup.

In Steve Yzerman's first season as captain of the Red Wings, he set about proving Jacques Demers right.

The baby-faced 21-year-old scored 90 points during the regular season, led the team to its best record in a decade, and helped rally the Red Wings from a 3-1 series deficit in the division final against the Toronto Maple Leafs to reach the Campbell Conference finals. And even after a loss there to the mighty Edmonton Oilers, Demers admits thinking to himself, "My God, we can win the Stanley Cup some day with this man."

A year later, Demers was thinking something else, however.

"I was worried we'd lost our franchise player," he said, remembering the night of March 1, 1988, when Yzerman slid awkwardly into the goal post in the second period of a game against Buffalo.

Earlier in that same period, Yzerman had scored his 50th goal of the season. Afterward, though, he lay in a bed in Hutzel Hospital awaiting surgery on his right knee, diagnosed with a torn posterior cruciate ligament.

After surgery, Yzerman, 22 at the time, was expected to miss the rest of the season. But as he would throughout his career, the Wings captain shook off the pain and made an early return to the lineup. He and his teammates again fell to Edmonton in the conference finals -- that was the year the infamous Goose Loonies incident stole the headlines -- but Yzerman had shown the "C" on his chest signified more than just his captaincy. It stood for courage.

The next season, Yzerman tore up the league, scoring 65 goals and 155 points -- both team records -- while earning league MVP honors from his peers ahead of Mario Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky, the only two players in NHL history to have scored more points in a season.

But the Red Wings took a step backward in the playoffs, losing in the first round to the Blues.

It was an early exit that would be repeated four times in six seasons, even as Detroit -- no longer the "Dead Things" -- began to dominate the Norris Division.

Bowman's way

Ask him today to compare his career to other greats, and the Red Wings captain balks, naturally. Gretzky? Lemieux? Bobby Orr?

"My feeling is those three elevated themselves a little bit beyond everybody else," said Yzerman, who would finish his career with 692 goals (eighth-best in NHL history) and 1,755 points (sixth) in 1,514 regular-season games. "I played over the last 20 years with a lot of great, great NHL players. But those three, whether it was a two- or three- or five-year period, were able to go a notch above the other great players. They reached a different level."

They also won championships.

Gretzky and Lemieux combined to win six Stanley Cups during a nine-year span that coincided with Yzerman's emergence as an NHL superstar. That only added to the pressure the Wings leader began to feel as the playoff disappointments mounted and coaches came and went.

Demers was fired in 1990 and replaced by Bryan Murray, who didn't fare any better, failing to get past the second round in his three seasons.

In the meantime, the Wings had unearthed a new offensive gem in Sergei Fedorov, a Russian center who scored 31 goals as a rookie in 1990-91. The following season, the Wings nearly traded Yzerman to Buffalo, but the Sabres instead dealt for the player who'd been drafted just ahead of Yzerman in 1983, Pat LaFontaine.

That wouldn't be the last time Yzerman's name surfaced in trade rumors, however.

In 1993, Wings owner Mike Ilitch hired coaching legend Scotty Bowman to take the helm, and after another playoff flop the following spring, Bowman -- a master motivator -- knew he'd have to challenge his captain to get the team over the hump. He asked for stronger backchecking, more blocked shots, a better commitment to defense.

"Scotty came in with a lot of authority," said Jimmy Devellano, senior vice president for the Wings, "and that was something he demanded."

The Wings charged into the Cup Finals in 1995, only to run into a buzzsaw in the New Jersey Devils, a team that dominated the Wings with its physical play and suffocating defense, the kind Bowman had been preaching. And by the start of the 1995-96 season, the Wings coach -- Bowman also was the team's director of player personnel -- had made it clear it was his way or the highway.

More disappointment

Rumors of a proposed trade with Ottawa involving Yzerman and Martin Straka surfaced in October, angering the Wings captain -- "I just wish I would be treated with a little more respect," he said -- as well as his fans.

Yet, while the standing ovation Yzerman received at the home opener that fall spoke volumes, it's also worth noting that the five-time 50-goal scorer actually accepted a checking-line role.

There would be no trade, of course. Bowman had made his point. The fans -- and Ilitch -- had made Yzerman's for him. And the Wings were on their way to a record-setting regular season with 62 victories. The playoffs offered even more thrills, highlighted by Yzerman's double-overtime goal against St. Louis in Game 7 of the conference semifinals. But even that season ended as so many others had, with Yzerman forced to stand before the cameras to explain another playoff defeat.

"I sit and watch every year as the Stanley Cup is being presented to someone else," he said wistfully.

The big trade came the following year, as Bowman shipped out Keith Primeau and Paul Coffey and brought in Brendan Shanahan from the Hartford Whalers early in the 1996-97 season. The March 26 brawl with Colorado later that season helped exorcise some of the demons of the past. And after leaving the Avalanche snowed under in a playoff rematch that spring, the Wings left little doubt they were a team on a mission, winning the first three games of the Cup Finals against the Philadelphia Flyers in convincing fashion.

"It was a burden for all of us in the mid-'90s," said Ken Holland, then assistant general manager of the Wings. "We had this collection of talent -- Steve was the crown jewel -- and we kept having great regular seasons and disappointing playoffs.

"But I can remember the day off between Games 3 and 4 against the Flyers that spring, walking into the training room and talking to Steve. I kind of let my guard down and said something to the effect of, 'How great is it going to be to win the Stanley Cup with everything that has gone on here.' And I remember him looking at me and saying, 'We haven't won anything yet.' And that's where the conversation ended. It was in our grasp so many times and we'd let the thing slip away. He just wasn't going to let it happen again."