January 3, 2007
SCOTTY BOWMAN

• "Steve survived eight head coaches and all their staffs. When I came here in '93, I recall a talk I had with Mike Ilitch after one of the games in the beginning of the first season as coach, and after another big game by Steve, Mike said to me, 'You haven't seen anything yet.' And for the next nine years I got to know what Mike meant, and I was able to see so much from Steve."

• "Steve, in trying to figure a reason for your longevity of the Red Wings, I've come to the conclusion that maybe we've kept you feeling so young by bringing in so many players older than you."

• "Steve built a legacy for all future Red Wing personnel to uphold. You were everything a captain should be."

NICKLAS LIDSTROM

• "Finally, for all my teammates the real honor has been to play with Steve Yzerman. He's been a great captain, a great teammate, a great friend."

JIM DEVELLANO

"We promised that we would build the team around him and he would be the cornerstone of this once proud franchise. We knew he was good but, boy, what a cornerstone he turned out to be."

MIKE ILITCH

• "For Steve Yzerman, being team captain it wasn't just his responsibility. It ran through his veins."

• "To Marian and me, Steve was like a member of our family."

• "Steve Yzerman, you helped build Hockeytown. When people hear your name, they can't help but think Detroit Red Wings. And we're very happy you made Hockeytown your home."

STEVE YZERMAN

• "Now, I look back on my career and we had great successes; we had disappointments ... every coach I played for had a significant, a positive impact on me as a hockey player and on me as a person."

• Bowman "taught me to be mentally tough and as every player knows, you get into the playoffs and there's some difficult stretches. One thing I learned about him was how to become tougher mentally. Playing under him, my confidence grew. Well, my stats declined, but my confidence grew. I will be forever grateful for Scotty's coaching abilities, his ability to bring us together and what he did. He changed me as a hockey player in a lot of ways and made me a much better leader and a much better captain."

• "I feel my image as a great leader is greatly overblown, and I realize that because I played with some of the best hockey players who have ever played in the league ... all I did was just go out and play like all of those players did. Gentlemen, again, I am grateful for all of your efforts. I am very humble and I say thank you. We did it together and any of the personal success I had was because of the wonderful players."

• "You have been an inspiration to me. My jersey's going to go up. And I hope that as you watch it go up and as you come back for a game in the future, you look up there and give yourself a pat on the back because I feel that you're a huge reason why that jersey's up there. I just happened to be the person who wore it. That number up there doesn't represent what I did. It represents what we did as an organization for the last 23 years."