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Rookie
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Motown, MI
Posts: 135
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Another Yzerman article...long, but worth it.
THE MAKING OF CAPTAIN COOL
BY SHAWN WINDSOR
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
The artist had just lowered himself 18 stories through single-digit air on the
backside of the skyscraper when the critic arrived.
"Hey," a man protested. "His face is too pretty."
Steve Yzerman had never looked so good. His chin was smooth and shaven. His lips
weren't swollen. His forehead had no stitches. He had all his teeth.
It was all wrong, a construction worker building Compuware's headquarters across
the street had come to say.
So Jason Coatney, who'd flown in from Portland, Ore., last winter to paint the
downtown mural, hoisted himself up the Cadillac Tower to make Yzerman's face
look more Detroit -- to add some scars.
"I've never seen a town go so nuts over a painting," said Coatney, who has
worked on more than 100 murals with his partner, Art Pastusak.
Everyone had an opinion on how it should look, even Yzerman himself, who,
Coatney said, had suggested the mural depict the entire Red Wings team. His
response was predictable -- he'd become an icon in part for his penchant for
deflection.
But the older he'd gotten, the more analytical he'd become. And the more he
gauged the angles, the more he realized the 18-story image wasn't just his.
It was Detroit's.
"Kind of cool," he says now.
If he's driving past the mural, he looks up.
"But it's not like I park my car in front of it," he said, a grin reconfiguring
that stoic mouth.
As he begins what could be his last playoff run Wednesday night, Yzerman -- one
of Detroit's most beloved athletes ever -- remains a kind of mystery.
Over the years, he has become a silent repository for blue-collar grit and
upper-class aspiration. He prefers to express himself on the ice, even as he
leads hockey's most glamorous team, one that has won three Stanley Cups in the
last seven years and is stocked with superstars more comfortable with the
limelight than he is.
Said Jacques Demers, who selected Yzerman as his captain at age 21 and who
coached him in 1986-90: "I don't think anyone will ever know who he really is."
Along with winning the Stanley Cups, Yzerman has endeared himself to Hockeytown
by playing hurt and -- no matter the circumstance -- saying the right thing in
public and in the locker room and, finally, by acting as if his accomplishments
are no big deal.
"I've been around forever," he said last week.
He had just come off a leg weight machine after a practice at Joe Louis Arena.
He wore a long-sleeve T-shirt and shorts that fit like bicycle pants. A line of
stitches held together a gash beside his right eye.
"People are used to my presence," he continued, fidgeting with the handle of a
hockey stick that was leaning against a locker-room wall. "I'm not a novelty."
This year's team, which finished the regular season Saturday with the league's
best record, is a fluid mix of old and young, Hall of Fame talent and grinders,
a familiar concoction to Red Wings fans. The team is led, still, by an
undersized, intensely reticent playmaker with a knee radically reconstructed
before last season.
Does he have a 22nd season in him?
"You never know. We win the Cup and . . ."
His voice trailed off.
He wants to play as long as he can. But a labor dispute and possible lockout
loom next season as owners and players battle over money.
Yzerman will turn 39 before this year's Cup finals. He has played better as the
season has progressed, surprising nearly everyone. He played in 75 of the 82
games, the center's highest total in four seasons.
His father and brother would like to see him return for another season, too. But
they don't know, either.
"I don't even think Steve knows," said Chris Yzerman, his younger brother who
lives in Ottawa.
The face of Hockeytown
The year before Yzerman arrived in Detroit, Joe Louis Arena was half-empty. The
Wings had been struggling for more than a decade. Mike Ilitch, who purchased the
team in 1982 for $8 million, lured fans from towns in southwestern Ontario with
$2 tickets and bus rides with beer. He also gave away cars at games.
Two weeks ago, Red Wings jerseys filled a hockey arena in the Arizona desert.
Michigan retirees and the unemployed who have moved to the Sunbelt and the
Southwest now comprise a transplanted Hockeytown cult. When the team plays where
it's warm, the Winged Wheel jerseys fill the stands. Yzerman is the face of the
far-flung popularity.
At Glendale Arena, the suburban hockey home of the Phoenix Coyotes, Wings fans,
many sporting Yzerman jerseys, arrived early. They pooled around the entrance
that leads the visiting team onto the ice.
It was the first game of the team's last western swing of the season.
"There's Stevie," a group of young women squealed.
He was a few feet from the glass, waiting for a turn in a pre-game drill. He
didn't turn around. The fans didn't begrudge him this. That he was so close was
enough.
The Wings tied the Coyotes, 1-1. In the locker room, a few players talked to the
beat reporters. Coach Dave Lewis gave his post-game briefing. Brendan Shanahan
tossed out one-liners. Darren McCarty, who loves to chat, did.
Yzerman slipped out. During the ebb and flow of the season, he is often elusive.
Reporters tend to seek him out only for the most newsworthy games.
When his brother Chris was hired by the Canadian Press to cover the Ottawa
Senators, Yzerman told him, "Don't ask stupid questions, don't come in with a
list written down, and don't be a jerk. If a guy is struggling, say it, but
don't be a smart ass."
On this night, Wayne Gretzky, part owner of the Coyotes, was waiting in the
tunnel outside the locker room.
In the late 1980s, when Yzerman began tearing up the National Hockey League with
his flashy grace, scoring points at a stunning clip, Gretzky was always there
with more -- goals, assists, Stanley Cups.
A one-sided rivalry developed as Yzerman looked to break out of Gretzky's
shadow.
"It got be frustrating as hell after a while," said Chris Yzerman.
Not until the 2002 Winter Olympics, when Gretzky assembled the Canadian team and
picked Yzerman, did a deep respect develop between them.
Skating in pain on a shredded knee, Yzerman helped Canada win its first gold
medal in 50 years.
"Gretzky was blown away by what Yzerman brought to that Olympic team," said Jim
Lites, the president of the Dallas Stars and former son-in-law to Ilitch and
vice president of the Wings. "He told me he'd never seen anyone bring such force
to a locker room."
Outside the visitors' locker room at Glendale, Yzerman chatted with Gretzky for
a few minutes. Brett Hull was there, too. Eventually, Hull and Gretzky took off.
When Yzerman left moments later, a group of fans pressed against a barricade
spotted him in a black suit. His hair was wet, his eyes tunneled ahead like
laser beams.
"STEVIE!" shouted the fans, most of them kids.
He jerked to a stop, signed jerseys, programs and hats and said nothing. He
looked at what he was signing. Then he disappeared into the warm desert night.
The unwanted draft pick
He was 18 and skinny when he arrived in Detroit as the fourth pick in the 1983
draft. Jimmy Devellano, the general manager, had wanted Pat LaFontaine, from
Waterford, to help sell tickets. LaFontaine was chosen third by the New York
Islanders -- "you know, apple pie and USA," Devellano said.
Yzerman came from Nepean, Ontario. He stood 5 feet 11 and weighed maybe 170
pounds. The plan was to send him back to junior hockey to bulk up. Five minutes
into the first practice at training camp in Port Huron changed the plan.
"Oh, my God," Devellano realized, "he's our best player."
Yzerman scored 39 goals that season, narrowly was beaten by Buffalo's Tom
Barrasso, a goalie, for rookie of the year, and helped the Wings make the
playoffs for the first time in six years.
He looked like he was 12. He parted his hair down the middle. He was exceedingly
shy and had a tendency to mumble on camera.
"My father told him not to mumble and to look up," Chris Yzerman said.
Steve Yzerman was fighting genetics. Ron Yzerman, Steve's father, also is
reserved. He passed it to his sons.
"Dad was never a strict disciplinarian," Chris said. But Ron Yzerman and his
wife, Jean, had rules for their four sons and daughter: Don't ruin the family
name, don't crash the car, don't end up in jail, don't call attention to
yourself.
Ron was a social worker who was promoted to work in Canada's national
government. Jean quit her job as a nurse to raise the children. The family moved
from British Columbia to a suburb of Ottawa when Yzerman was 10.
He had begun playing hockey at 5. By the time he got to Nepean, outside Ottawa,
he dominated the boys league.
His brother said young Steve forged notes from his parents to skip school to get
more ice time.
"He's not a saint," Chris Yzerman said, "but he's always kept his nose clean."
Steve Yzerman met Darren Pang when he was 14; Pang was 15. Pang, who later
became an NHL goalie and then an ESPN color analyst, lived across from a grocery
store parking lot in Nepean.
Theboys spent nights under the lights in the parking lot playing street hockey
in tennis shoes, slapping a tennis ball around with sticks.
"He was competitive even then," Pang said. "He had the will to excel, something
internal that you see with the great ones."
They played squash and tennis. They talked of making it to professional hockey.
Now, they talk about family and daughters -- Yzerman has three, Isabella, 10,
Maria, 5, and Sophia, 4. And they talk wine.
"He doesn't know just superficially about wine," Pang said. "He knows what
grapes must be stored at what temperature."
He has toured wine country in Italy and France, displaying the same
single-mindedness he does with everything else that grabs his attention -- his
home office is stacked with books and magazines.
"He's always had an interest in life outside hockey," Pang said.
Pang was best man at Yzerman's wedding in 1989 -- he married Lisa Brennan, who
went to high school with Pang. They rendezvous in the summers, at the Yzerman
cottage on an inland lake north of Toronto.
"I try to relieve him of every bottle of wine up there," Pang said.
Yzerman's cottage once belonged to Maple Leafs legend Conn Smythe, whose name
adorns the playoff most valuable player award, which Yzerman won in 1998.
When the Wings won the Stanley Cup in 2002, the team and many wives celebrated
all night at a Royal Oak restaurant. Later, Pang and Yzerman ended up at Oakland
Hills Country Club, where Yzerman is a member. The Cup was on the table as they
ate breakfast.
"It was 5:30 in the morning, there was dew on the ground, we went to the grill
overlooking the putting green," Pang remembered.
They watched the sunrise.
Carrying the franchise
His on-ice gift is a kind of geometric clairvoyance, an ability to see angles
unfold a fraction before everyone else. His teammates call him Silk.
The NHL came easy to Yzerman the first two years, according to Devellano. The
team made the playoffs each season. Opponents began looking for weak spots and
zeroed in on Yzerman's size.
Yzerman was pushed around. He struggled, suffering a broken collarbone midway
through his third season. The team missed the playoffs.
"He had to learn how to train, how to take care of himself," said Wings head
coach Dave Lewis, a defenseman who played with Yzerman in the mid-1980s. "He had
a lot to learn."
But he needed to learn fast. At just 20, the Wings "were asking him to carry a
franchise," Devellano said.
The Yzerman mythology began in his fourth season, when an affable French
Canadian and former truck driver was hired as coach.
Jacques Demers got to camp in the fall and named Yzerman the captain. The team,
with the help of draft picks, free agents and Demers' emotion, got back to the
playoffs. Yzerman tore up the league the next seven years. But the team kept
losing in the playoffs, and the pressure grew.
"He had kind of gotten a reputation inside that we were never going to win with
him," Lites said. "He was seen as a little selfish, a little aloof from the rest
of the team. Most of it was shyness."
Sergei Fedorov left Russia in the summer of 1990. He signed with the Wings and
made an Yzerman-like splash his rookie year. After that season, management began
thinking it could move Yzerman.
In late October 1991, the Wings thought they had Yzerman traded to Buffalo.
"I went to bed thinking he was gone," said Lites, then the vice president of the
Wings.
The next morning, the deal was off. Buffalo got LaFontaine instead. The local
boy spent the rest of his career fighting injuries and retired in 1998.
"Can you imagine? That trade would've been a disaster," Lites said, chuckling at
the thought. "Sometimes, the best trades are the ones you don't make."
Not long before the almost-trade, Yzerman had agreed to help negotiate for the
players' union and ended up across the table from Ilitch. When players voted to
strike later that year, and Yzerman backed them, Ilitch felt betrayed.
The next few years the team filled the gaps around Yzerman. Expectations grew.
Early-round losses were devastating. Yzerman said this was the toughest stretch
of his career.
"He wouldn't talk. Wouldn't say a word," his brother Chris said. "Before he had
his little girls, when they lost in the playoffs, he'd just disappear inside
himself for a few weeks until he got over it. He took it so personally. He was
embarrassed. I used to feel sorry for Lisa."
More trade rumors added to the uncertainty, reaching a crescendo in 1993 when
Scotty Bowman arrived.
A man of responsibility
Two days after the game in Phoenix, Yzerman was standing in the corridor outside
the visitors' dressing room at the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. The
Wings had just beaten the Kings, 4-2.
He had played well, getting three assists. The rebuilt knee, the pulled groin,
the smashed teeth -- this season's major ailments -- were all feeling better and
he was beginning to look scrappy on the ice.
"I feel like I'm getting stronger," he told a handful of reporters, looking, as
always, ready to escape.
Despite the necessary but unpleasant task of talking to reporters about himself,
he approached it with the seriousness he does everything else. When movie star
John Cusack sauntered over to get Yzerman's attention, tapping him on the
shoulder, the hockey star kept answering questions. Cusack waited his turn.
After L.A., the Wings drove across town to play the Anaheim Mighty Ducks,
Fedorov's new team, the next night.
In many ways, Fedorov, the first Wing to match Yzerman's raw talent, was the
captain's biggest challenge. In the early days, he rode the young prodigy hard,
prodding, cajoling and intimidating him to squeeze out all his talent.
Eventually, Yzerman discovered manipulation.
During the 2002 Stanley Cup run, with Yzerman skating on a blown knee, he often
pulled Fedorov aside and exaggerated his pain and thus, his limitations.
"He would tell Sergei, 'Look, man, I don't know what I can do tonight, you gotta
be the man,' " teammate Darren McCarty said. "He's like a parental figure."
Ten minutes after an 8-6 loss to the Ducks, Fedorov, stripped of his jersey,
still in his shorts, wearing flip-flops, approached the Wings dressing room.
"Where's Stevie?" he asked as he peered into the entrance.
Yzerman had long commanded the locker room. But it took him a while to grow into
the leader he has become, to learn to motivate with encouragement at one moment,
to unleash scathing sarcasm at another.
"Maybe a guy is playing really well, his head is getting big," explained Pang,
and Yzerman "might walk by and say: 'Not doing an interview right now, eh?' Or
maybe a player is struggling and he hasn't worked hard enough. And he leaves
practice a little too early and Steve will say: 'Not staying on the ice for a
few extra shots?' He has that rare ability to put people in their place."
They were similar to techniques Bowman had used on Yzerman. When the coaching
icon took over the team, he demanded Yzerman and the team play tougher defense.
Bowman wanted to break Yzerman down and build him back in his image. He insisted
that Yzerman lie down to block shots and chip pucks to safety and other small
things that make a difference.
Bowman leaked rumors of trades -- mainly, to Ottawa.
"No one will ever know how serious Scotty was with the trade talk," Wings
general manager Ken Holland said. But "if he got the leader, he gets the team."
Bowman says now Yzerman wasn't going to be traded, implying that Ilitch wouldn't
allow it. Fans got wind of the trade talk during the summer of 1995. They gave
Yzerman a long ovation at the home opener to send Bowman a message.
Even though the fans sided with Yzerman, he already had begun to become a more
complete player. In 2000, he would win the Selke Trophy as hockey's best
defensive forward.
"To his credit, he didn't want to leave," Holland said. "He changed his game."
And that, said Lites, was when "Yzerman became a monster" of a player, "feared
by other general managers."
Said Bowman of Yzerman: "He was such a fierce competitor; he took too much
responsibility. There was too much pressure on him in the early 1990s. He needed
to take a step back."
The two came to respect each other. They needed each other. When Bowman retired,
he'd won nine Stanley Cups as a coach. Yzerman had won three.
Always his own man
One day, Yzerman wants to rent an RV with Lisa and his daughters and follow the
sunset. They will drive until they reach western Canada. They will stop in the
outpost towns that shaped his youth, and the girls will size up part of their
roots, where their daddy laced up skates.
It will not be a mission of self-discovery. Yzerman has long known who he is.
That understanding is "a gift," Ilitch said recently. The Wings' owner
recognized it when Yzerman was only 18, and Ilitch had invited Yzerman to his
house.
"We sat at the kitchen table for four hours," Ilitch recalled. "I was
flabbergasted. He was knowledgeable about many things."
The owner and star have long since patched up any ill will over the labor strife
and trade rumors. Winning does that.
Yzerman's home now is metro Detroit. He has lived here -- in Detroit, Grosse
Pointe and Bloomfield Hills -- longer than in his native Canada. Three years
ago, he made it official and became a U.S. citizen, at a middle school in
Bloomfield Hills.
No one knew Yzerman would be among the 50 swearing in that day. When his name
was called, the room fell silent.
The reaction was somewhat typical. Yzerman's fans generally do not intrude on
his space, allowing him a surprisingly low-key life, whether picking up his
daughters after school or taking Lisa to dinner and a movie. Some wish him luck
or summon the temerity to ask for an autograph.
"It's a nice blend of anonymity and recognition," he explained, again citing his
longevity as the principal reason.
Gordie Howe, the Wings' original "Mr. Hockey," was different. He became famous
before the television-fueled celebrity culture. He was a back-slapper, a
charismatic old-schooler who might rub elbows at a corner bar, the proletariat
legend. Still, he wasn't comfortable during his four years as Red Wings captain
in the early 1960s.
"That 'C' on the jersey looks like it weighs only a few ounces," Howe said.
"It's a hell of a lot heavier than that."
Yzerman is more comfortable as captain than community icon. He's the longest
serving captain in NHL history.
"He's a god," McCarty said. "If I'm out on the town, people come up and say:
'Hey Mac! How's it goin'?' They can relate. I'm one of them, only with a cool
job. With him, it's awe."
He is aware of his status in the Detroit area, although sometimes he forgets.
"I have to remind myself," he said, "of the kind of impact I've had" with fans.
His legacy could endure decades more. When he does retire, he'd like to help run
the team.
"Some day I'd like to put my ideas to the test," he said.
Last August, before the season started, Yzerman's maternal grandfather died. He
joined his brothers and father in British Columbia for the funeral.
They decided to drive to Creston, the tiny town where their grandfather had
lived. When they pulled up to the house, Yzerman jumped out. He walked around
back to the garden, and back to the front to the plum tree, which he climbed as
a boy.
"That glare disappeared," Chris Yzerman remembered. "He was so serene."
He pulled off a piece of fruit. Dusk settled. In the twilight, he stood in the
grass he had roamed before anyone suggested he couldn't win the big one, before
anyone had deified him.
This week, he begins another run at the Cup, not to add to his legend but
because that's what he does.
* * *
THE CAPTAIN'S BIO
Who: Steve Yzerman, Red Wings center since 1983 and captain since 1986.
Born: May 9, 1965, at Cranbrook, British Columbia.
Raised: Nepean, Ontario, a suburb of Ottawa. (A rink there is named in his
honor.)
Family: Lives in Bloomfield Hills with wife Lisa and daughters Isabella, 10,
Maria, 5, and Sophia, 4.
Acquired: Detroit's first pick (fourth overall) in 1983 NHL entry draft.
Last amateur club: Peterborough of Ontario Hockey League.
Height: 5-feet-11.
Weight: 185 pounds.
Shoots: Right.
Major awards: All-rookie team (1984); NHL All-Star Games (1984, 1988-93, 1997,
2000) (missed 1999 game because of injury); Pearson Award, top performer as
voted by players' union (1989); Stanley Cups (1997-98, 2002); Conn Smythe
Trophy, MVP of playoffs (1998); first-team All-Star (2000); Selke Trophy, top
defensive forward (2000); Olympic gold medal (2002); Masterton Trophy, for
perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication (2003).
Favorite athlete? Stevie beats Barry
It's official: Steve Yzerman is tops among Michigan fans.
Fifteen percent of Michiganders named Yzerman as Detroit's favorite sports hero
in the last 20 years, according to a survey of 600 registered voters last week
by EPIC/MRA of Lansing.
Next closest was Barry Sanders with 10 percent, Al Kaline with 9 percent and
Isiah Thomas with 8 percent. The only other hockey player to get more than 1
percent was Gordie Howe with 5 percent. (Respondents included Kaline and Howe
even though they retired more than 20 years ago.)
In a separate question asking respondents to choose from a list of six recent
stars, Yzerman was the big favorite with 31 percent. Thomas was second with 14
percent, followed by Sanders (13 percent), Alan Trammell (12 percent), Joe
Dumars (8 percent) and Bill Laimbeer (4 percent).
Yzerman is most popular in Macomb and Oakland counties, in metro Detroit (versus
outstate), among Catholics and among men. Thomas is the favorite athlete among
black Michiganders. When choosing among the six stars, only six percent of
African Americans chose Yzerman; 32 percent picked Thomas.
The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Copyright © 2004 Detroit Free Press Inc.
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Another Yzerman article...long, but worth it.
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