Life Without Lidstrom Terrifying Thought For Red Wings, Fans

Nick Lidstrom doesn’t block shots. He doesn’t body check anyone. He’s never thrown an elbow. His next fight will be his first.

The greatest hockey defenseman of his time—or maybe of any time—isn’t supposed to be so mild-mannered. He isn’t supposed to be less physical than a second baseman.

Lidstrom, the Red Wings' all-universe defenseman, is 41 years old. In human years.

In hockey-playing years, he’s closer to 30, because he hasn’t used his body as a battering ram or for someone else’s target practice.

Lidstrom plays hockey like Bobby Fischer played chess and Minnesota Fats played billiards—literally. No one has seen that 200’x80’ sheet of ice better than Lidstrom, who is always a move or two ahead of his opponent. He’s the geometric hockey player—using the puck’s caroms and angles like Fats used those green felt rails.

There hasn’t been a defenseman like him, before or since he entered the NHL in 1991. I’ll put up a batch of my wife’s Pasta Fagioli that there won’t be one like him after, either. Ever.

He’s 41 and despite his lack of wear and tear, Lidstrom is on the back end of his career. Only a delusional fool would believe otherwise.

The topic came up Monday night on “The Knee Jerks,” the podcast I co-host each week with Big Al Beaton of The Wayne Fontes Experience.

What will life be like, we wondered, when Lidstrom neatly folds his sweater and hangs up his skates?The word “terrifying” came up, more than once.





It’s an annual question—one that we ask without really wanting to know the answer. You ask the question and then bury your face in something, shivering.

Last spring, Nick made us sweat a little bit more than normal. It took several weeks after the Red Wings were once again eliminated in the second round of the playoffs by the San Jose Sharks for Lidstrom to consent to play his 20th season.

They could hear the sighs of relief from Detroit all the way to, well, San Jose.

It’s not just that Lidstrom has played 20 seasons, or that he’s played them flawlessly, or that he’s the perfect teammate or that he seamlessly took over as captain from Steve Yzerman, no less—which is like a singer stepping onto the stage right after a set by Sinatra and no one noticing.

No, it’s that Lidstrom has done all that while hardly missing a game.

His games-played column reads like an early-summer thermometer: 76, 78, 80, 77, 79, 80, 81.

The spooky notion of no more Nick Lidstrom is just as much the fear of the unknown as anything else.

We don’t want to think of the Red Wings without Lidstrom because we haven’t really seen the Red Wings without Lidstrom since before he was a Red Wing.

It’s History 101.The last time a Red Wings roster didn’t list Lidstrom’s name, George Bush The First was President. The Pistons were the defending NBA champs—but they were the Pistons of Isiah and Dumars, not Chauncey and Hamilton.





There was no Internet.

The kids graduating high school this year were still two years from being born.

Need I go on?

Lidstrom’s longevity is one thing; his durability is quite another.

As much as Yzerman is revered in Detroit—and he should be—Steve wasn’t exactly an Iron Man, unless you count his days spent in those hyperbaric chambers. Stevie Y was more Iron Lung than Iron Man.

Yzerman missed games in chunks, due to various injuries. He was the anti-Lidstrom, in a sense.

There was a serious knee injury in 1988. But that wasn’t the worst of it. As Yzerman got older, his body broke down more frequently. He played the 2002 playoffs on a knee so mangled that he managed to report to work for just 13 games the following season, recovering from the knee’s reconstruction.

There was more time lost in the 2005-06 season, Yzerman’s last as a player.

So we had heaping spoonfuls of Red Wings life without Steve Yzerman, making his retirement no less sad—just less of a shock to the system.Not so with Lidstrom, who has played with mind-numbing consistency and Lou Gehrig-like durability.



We have not been prepped for Lidstrom’s retirement.



If the Red Wings fan base thinks that another Lidstrom is being groomed, or that he can in any way be replaced, forget it. Not going to happen.

This is no affront to Niklas Kronwall or Brad Stuart or Jonathan Ericsson or to any of the prospects in the Red Wings’ system.

Players like Nick Lidstrom come by once in a franchise’s lifetime—if that.

How will the Red Wings ever replace him?

Did the Boston Bruins replace Raymond Bourque?

Yzerman, for all of his Hall of Fame worthiness, was in the process of being phased out by the time he retired in 2006. The cache of forwards the Red Wings employed made Stevie’s departure easier to digest.

All the Red Wings can do when Lidstrom finally bids farewell—and it’ll be sooner rather than later—is take a deep breath, exhale and hope that they have a defensive corps that can band together and do one of those “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” kind of things.

Because if you think he’s going to be replaced, you’re mad.The Red Wings have had four—four—players who’ve played 20-plus seasons for them: Lidstrom, Yzerman, Gordie Howe and Alex Delvecchio.



This is significant.

The Montreal Canadiens, for all their history and Stanley Cups, have had just one player—Jean Beliveau—play as many as 19 seasons for them.



The Toronto Maple Leafs have had only George Armstrong play 20 seasons wearing the Leaf.

The New York Rangers have no 20-plus-year men.

The Boston Bruins have only Bourque, who played a tad over 20 in Beantown.

The Chicago Blackhawks had Stan Mikita for 21 years. That’s it.

The Red Wings have had four such men. It’s significant.

The most recent of the Red Wings’ 20-plus-year men might leave a void that none of his predecessors left—not even Howe, for Gordie “retired” with the team well on its way to being miserable for an entire decade.

How do the Red Wings replace Nick Lidstrom?

They don’t.

I guess he’ll just have to keep playing until we figure something out.

NHL Playoffs: Pain Don't Hurt This Time of Year

The ankle inside Bob Baun’s skating boot was broken. It is the hockey player’s creed to never be helped from the ice unless amputation is on tap, but that’s what happened to Baun on April 23, 1964 at Detroit’s Olympia Stadium—he was the wounded warrior and his Toronto Maple Leaf teammates were his platoon members carrying him off the battlefield. This was Game 6 of the 1964 Stanley Cup Finals. The Red Wings led the Leafs, 3 games to 2, and were poised to win the Cup on their home ice. As Baun, one of the Maple Leafs’ best defensemen, was being removed from action, it looked like the hockey gods were smiling down on the Red Wings. But this is hockey, and it was the Stanley Cup Finals, and Bob Baun’s ankle was broken, not missing, so Baun did what the hockey player does, as much as his body is willing—he returned to the game, his boot taped to his ankle like a tourniquet. The game went into overtime, with every rush up the ice by the Red Wings being potentially the one that could lead to the Cup-winning goal. The old red barn on Grand River and McGraw shook every time the vulcanized rubber disc would be flipped into the Toronto zone. Overtime hockey is heart-stopping, gut-churning stuff. Never has a term been so aptly coined as “sudden death.” If the winning goal comes from the visitors, the air is sucked out of the arena like crumbs into a vacuum cleaner. Baun, skating on his wobbly, broken ankle, stopped the puck just inside the Red Wings’ blue line and slapped a shot toward the Detroit net. It was hardly a rocket, but the puck had eyes and it found the twine behind goalie Terry Sawchuk. The Maple Leafs celebrated like mad on the Olympia ice, the Detroit crowd dazed and silent. Baun could barely stand as his teammates mobbed him. The series was tied, a decisive Game 7 necessary. The Maple Leafs won Game 7 in Toronto, 4-0, and snatched the Stanley Cup from under the Red Wings’ noses—thanks largely to the one-legged Bob Baun. The Red Wings’ Brent Gilchrist wasn’t one-legged in 1998; he was no-groined. It was another example of the playoff hockey player gone mad. Gilchrist was 31 years old, in his 10th NHL season, and his first with the Red Wings as the 1998 playoffs dawned. Late in the season an old groin injury flared up inside Gilchrist, which didn’t hurt him unless he moved or breathed. Other than that, he was fine. The pain was excruciating. To a hockey player, a bad groin injury is like a sore throat for a giraffe, to borrow an old, weary joke. And Gilchrist had a bad one, alright. With every stride he took on skates, the groin screamed at him to stop. But these were the playoffs. Gilchrist had himself injected, in his groin, before every playoff game he played in that year with needles as long as Pinocchio’s nose in a game of liar’s poker. Even his fellow hockey warriors didn’t care to look when Gilchrist went into the trainer’s room for his pre-game treatment. Sometimes the shots would wear off and Gilchrist would have them done again between periods. He played in 15 of the Red Wings’ 22 playoff games in 1998, his groin on fire. His injury was so severe that Gilchrist only played in five games the following season. But the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup in 1998, so the pain was worth it to Brent Gilchrist, who’d never won the Cup before. Steve Yzerman, on the other hand, was already a two-time Stanley Cup winner when he went into the 2002 playoffs on one good leg. Yzerman hurt his knee during the 2001-02 season, missing 30 games. When the playoffs arrived, Yzerman was in great pain but as is usual with the playoff hockey player, Yzerman played the “mind over matter” game and, at age 37, Stevie Y was taking regular shifts on a knee that qualified for Federal disaster relief. Yzerman even spent some time during the playoffs in a special hyperbaric oxygen chamber. But that was nothing compared to what he put himself through before games, like Brent Gilchrist four years earlier. Again, there were long needles involved and teammates looking the other way. These were the playoffs, after all. The Red Wings won another Stanley Cup, their captain by the end of the playoff run needing to prop himself from the ice with his hands because his knee wasn’t able to do it by itself. And, like Gilchrist, Yzerman’s injury had after effects. Following the 2001-02 season, Yzerman underwent a knee realignment surgery, which meant that he played during the playoffs with a knee that was misaligned, which—I don’t know about you—sounds as delightful as chomping on a candy apple with misaligned teeth. The surgery was called an osteotomy, and doctors told us that it was commonly performed—on senior citizens! Here’s a description of a knee osteotomy, courtesy Wikipedia: Knee osteotomy is commonly used to realign arthritic damage on one side of the knee. The goal is to shift the patient’s body weight off the damaged area to the other side of the knee, where the cartilage is still healthy. Surgeons remove a wedge of the tibia from underneath the unhealthy side of the knee, which allows the tibia and femur to bend away from the damaged cartilage. And Yzerman led the Red Wings to the 2002 Stanley Cup on a knee that needed the above work, forthwith. Now it’s 2011, and already there is a walking wounded among the Red Wings before the playoffs even get started—leading scorer Henrik Zetterberg, who suffered a “lower body injury” in Carolina this week. Judging by the way Zetterberg left the ice, the lower body injury looks like something to do with his legs. Zetterberg’s status, according to the propagandists within the Red Wings’ medical staff, is the unsatisfying “day-to-day.” No doubt, maybe even as we speak, Hank Zetterberg is undergoing some sort of treatment, somewhere on his “lower body,” that is designed to deaden his pain and brainwash him into thinking that it’s not all that bad—until the playoffs end and they tell him that his lower body will have to be realigned. Hey, after Bob Baun scored on a broken ankle and Brent Gilchrist had himself shot up with knitting needles and Steve Yzerman led his teammates to a Stanley Cup on a misaligned knee, it’s the least Zetterberg can do, me thinks. These are the playoffs, for chrissakes.

Yzerman Winning Again, and It's No Surprise

It’s a different type of competitiveness now.

These days, Steve Yzerman doesn’t go into the corners, he goes into an office. He doesn’t try to win face-offs, he tries to win players. He doesn’t wear a sweater and skates, he wears a dress shirt and wingtip shoes.

You can dress him however you like, put him wherever you want, but you can’t take the will to win out of him.

There’s quite a story going on in the NHL, not that you’d know it, because it’s happening to a team closer to Cuba than Canada.

Yzerman is Vice President and General Manager of the Tampa Bay Lightning, a hockey team that really does play in the NHL—I looked it up.

Yzerman took the Tampa job because he wanted to run an NHL team in the worst way. Mission accomplished; the Lightning has been an NHL team in the worst way in recent years.

At the time of his hiring last May, the Lightning hadn’t had a winning season since 2007. As recently as 2008-09, the Lightning were 24-40-18, a nice way of saying they won 24 and lost 58.

But Yzerman didn’t care. He wasn’t going to realize his dream of running an NHL organization inDetroit—where everyone is entrenched and there’s a waiting list.

He retired as a player in July 2006 and immediately started his internship in the Red Wings’ front office. You could do worse than to learn from the hockey minds in the bowels of Joe Louis Arena.

Kenny Holland. Jimmy Devellano. Jim Nill. Mark Howe. And, for a time, Scotty Bowman.

You don’t think Stevie Y learned a thing or two?

It wasn’t going to happen in Detroit for Yzerman, so after four years of apprenticeship, The Captain got restless. He wanted to be The General Manager.

The Tampa Bay Lightning wanted to be respected. They wanted to be more than a nice little team who played in Florida and who would visit your team’s city, lose, and politely leave.

The Lightning looked at Yzerman, a hockey icon, saw his situation in Detroit, and got some ideas. New owner Jeff Vinik, who had bought the team in March 2010, set his sights on Yzerman and no one else, according to reports.

When the news broke of the Lightning’s interest in Yzerman, I wrote that he ought to take the job, no matter how repulsive it was. The job, I wrote, was beneath Yzerman, to work for the Lightning, who weren’t even in the NHL until 1992.

But he absolutely needed to take it I argued, if he wanted to realize his GM dream forthwith.

The Lightning not only made Yzerman the GM, they tagged him with the title of Vice President, too. He reports only to owner Vinik, who put complete faith and trust into Yzerman’s ability to rebuild his organization.

Seems Yzerman has indeed learned some things, wiling away his time in the Red Wings’ front office.

The Lightning are among the best teams in hockey right now and Yzerman has played no small part in the resurgence.

First, he hired a new coach, 38-year-old Guy Boucher. Yzerman couldn’t care less that most hockey people outside of Boucher’s next of kin would say, “Guy WHO?”

“Guy Boucher is one of the finest young hockey coaches in the game today,” Yzerman said in announcing his first hire as VP/GM.

Boucher’s résumé was as a minor league coach who had his finest season in 2009-10 with the AHL’sHamilton Bulldogs, winning 52 games and garnering 115 points.

Then, as his first choice, Yzerman drafted winger Brett Connolly, surprising the people labeled with that hackneyed term, “expert.”

Connolly was coming off an injury and it was a curve ball that Yzerman threw, because the supposed conventional choices were top-rated defensemen Cam Fowler and Brandon Gormley—who both slipped in the first round—making them available to the Lightning at sixth.

Connolly is 18 years-old and if his recovery from his hip flexor injury proceeds as Yzerman expects, The General Manager will have pulled a fast one.

Yzerman was 18 once, only he was in the NHL at that age, drafted third overall by the Red Wings in 1983. Three years later, he was the team’s captain.

You know the rest.

Yzerman made some other roster moves, tweaks and such, in preparation for his first season as VP/GM.

Then they dropped the puck on opening night, and the Lightning has been striking ever since.

After 10 games, the Lightning were 7-2-1, followed by a little lull, then a five-game winning streak that made them 13-7-2.

Restless again in his Armani suit, Yzerman looked at the goaltending situation and found it to be unacceptable.

So he traded for veteran Dwayne Roloson, and when I say "veteran," I’m trying to be polite. Roloson is 41 years old.

But the new/old goalie is playing OK for Yzerman’s team, going 5-3 with a save percentage of .910.

The young coach Boucher is doing better than OK with his equally-as-young team, squeezing every ounce of hockey-playing skill from it.

The Lightning, going into Saturday, were sitting at 29-15-5, second best in the Eastern Conference. They won just 34 games all of last season.

Yzerman is winning again—big surprise.

No team with which Yzerman has been associated has had a losing season since 1991.

Now he’s taking the slapstick Tampa Bay Lightning and making them the new Beasts of the East.

Veteran hockey observer Scotty Morrison had this to say about Yzerman’s decision to sign the 41-year-old goalie Roloson to compete with incumbents Dan Ellis and Mike Smith, both into whom Yzerman had put faith:

"There are some guys who would refuse to admit that things weren't working as anticipated and might ride it out longer and wait too long. Whether it's admitting a mistake or admitting he needed an improvement, (Yzerman) went out and did it, so good for him."

Steve Yzerman, some might say, has nothing left to prove in hockey. He’s won three Stanley Cups, played for 22 seasons and overcome injuries that would make a medical examiner wince.

But competitors never stop competing. Yzerman has wanted this very badly for many years. He’s wanted to be a hockey architect, ever since he saw how the best did it in Detroit.

Yzerman is turning the Tampa (freaking) Bay Lightning into winners in his first year on the job.

Surprised?

Chelios's New Role Par for the Red Wings' Course

The Detroit Red Wings do a lot of things well—win hockey games, take care of their players, represent the Original Six with aplomb. They show up to the playoffs every year and it’s never as an afterthought, like someone slipping into an elevator just before the doors close.

Four Stanley Cups since 1997, plus some close calls that could have brought that number to five or six.

Now the Red Wings are becoming a feeder program for team and league executives.

Brendan Shanahan, an NHL Vice President.

Steve Yzerman, GM of the Tampa Bay Lightning.

And now Chris Chelios, the newest Red Wings front office man.

It’s not likely to end there.

What might defenseman Nick Lidstrom be asked to do, when he hangs up his skates—assuming he returns to Sweden? The NHL could use Lidstrom in their hierarchy, perhaps as an ambassador or liaison to hockey in Sweden or elsewhere.

You think Kris Draper will just fade away? I can see him as a coach or in the front office in Grand Rapids, a few years hence.

I can just picture Chris Osgood traipsing to Traverse City every September to work with the team’s young goalies.

The Red Wings aren’t just a hockey team, they are a hockey institution, literally. It’s where you go to be educated about the game and contribute to hockey society after your playing days are done.

Joe Louis Arena may as well add some ivy onto its old brick walls and a build a campus bookstore and student lounge inside. Players shouldn’t get a playbook, they should get a syllabus.

Look at GM Ken Holland.

Holland was a struggling minor league goalie when the Red Wings secured him from the Hartford Whalers organ-EYE-zay-shun (this is hockey; gotta pronounce it correctly). In 1985, Holland finished his brief NHL career with the Red Wings, who saw something in his intuition for the game and groomed him as a scout, starting in his home turf of Western Canada.

One thing led to another, and before long Holland was back in Detroit, learning how to be a hockey manager (hockey people don’t say GM) under Scotty Bowman, no less.

After Bowman had held the dual roles of coach and manager from 1994-97, it was decided that Holland was ready to take over the managing.

The transition was seamless; the Red Wings won another Cup in 1998, Holland’s first year as manager.

Look at assistant GM Jim Nill.

Nill was acquired as a player late in his career, and when he retired, the Wings again saw something and made Nill an offer to stay in the organ-EYE-zay-shun.

Before long, after also going the scouting route, Nill ended up as Holland’s right hand man and as the Red Wings’ draft specialist.

Look at advanced scouting director Mark Howe.

Howe joined the Red Wings in 1992 as a 37-year-old geezer looking for another kick at the can, after two failed Finals appearances with the Flyers.

The Red Wings made the Finals in Howe’s last year as a player (1995) but were swept by the Devils.

No matter. Howe wasn’t allowed to fade away, either. The Red Wings made him a scout, too (see a pattern here?), and true to form, Howe was eventually promoted to advanced scouting director, which means he’s in charge of scouting upcoming Red Wings opponents in the regular season and playoffs.

Howe, thanks to the initial post-playing job offer, wears four championship rings, albeit all gained in Armani instead of on skates.

Look at advanced scout Pat Verbeek.

Howe was Verbeek’s boss, essentially. Patty Verbeek, known as The Little Ball of Hate as a player, was in the Red Wings’ scouting department ever since retiring from the NHL several years ago, until Yzerman hired him away to work for the Lightning.

The highest-profile examples of this Red Wings-as-an-institution of higher hockey learning thing of course are Shanahan, who’s doing marvelous work for the NHL, and Yzerman, who’s gaining his footing as the Lightning’s new man in charge.

Tuesday, Chelios officially retired as a player and joined the Red Wings front office. His role is still being defined, as Yzerman’s was when he retired in 2006. But Holland said Chelios will advise Holland, will advise coach Mike Babcock, and will work with the team’s defenseman prospects. For now.

Holland is still a relatively young guy—not in his 60s yet. He won’t budge from Detroit anytime soon, but the Red Wings are starting to send former players from the ice to the executive washrooms of their own team, other teams and even the NHL itself.

It’s yet another affirmation of the Red Wings’ place as a beacon of hockey smarts and its status as the best organ-EYE-zay-shun in the NHL, by far.

Yzerman, Like Ilitch, Took the Path of Greater Resistance

The home of Michael Ilitch has become an historic landmark for high-profile departures.

It was almost 20 years ago---June, 1990---when Ilitch, the Red Wings owner, placed a phone call he dreaded making.

On the other end of the line, Jacques Demers was summoned to the Ilitch pad.

Shortly after Demers arrived, two grown men had a good cry.

Ilitch had bad news for Demers, who had then just completed his fourth season as Red Wings coach.

They call it the "ziggy" in Detroit. Our word for canning a coach. You can thank the old Lions coach, Joe Schmidt, for its creation.

Schmidt rendered a self-ziggy in January, 1973---the loser of a power struggle in the Lions' front office with GM Russ Thomas.

Inside Ilitch's home on that June day in 1990, the ziggy wasn't self-inflicted at all.

Ilitch, ever the gentleman and consummate professional, could have told Demers over the phone that he was being released. He could have delivered the news via his agent. He could have mailed a certified letter---no e-mail or text messaging in those days.

Ilitch would have none of that. He had made a very difficult decision about a man who he adored, and so he was going to break that news in person, mano-a-mano.

Jacques Demers said he'd never forget the courtesy Ilitch gave him, the day the owner fired him as Red Wings coach.

Ilitch had a relationship with Demers that never was replicated with any other Red Wings coach, before or since. Just four years prior to the 1990 meeting at his house, Ilitch and his lieutenants had bent the rules in order to poach Demers from the St. Louis Blues. They're still crying about it in St. Louie.

But in 1990, two years removed from Final Four status and after having missed the playoffs completely in 1989-90 (still the last time the Red Wings missed the post-season), Ilitch had come to the hardest decision---to that point---he ever made as Red Wings owner.

So he told Demers, in person, that the Red Wings were letting him go. Bryan Murray was pretty much already hired as Jacques' replacement.

Demers's respect for Ilitch, already off the charts, grew even greater in the wake of how Demers's cashiering was handled.

Twenty years after that teary meeting, another took place in the Ilitch home.

Steve Yzerman---Stevie Y, forever a Red Wing---was telling the owner, practically a father figure, that he was accepting the Tampa Bay Lightning's offer to be their new GM.

It's a safe bet that the eyes of Mike and Marian Ilitch and Yzerman were far from dry.

But Yzerman, who has learned so much from so many within the Red Wings organization, proved that he learned something from the old man owner.

Yzerman could have taken the less uncomfortable path to deliver his news, just as Ilitch could have, when he fired Jacques Demers.

Nothing doing.

Yzerman had made a big decision in his own right, and so it would have to be delivered in person---even more impressive considering all the ways people can be gotten ahold of in this digital age.

No e-mails. No texts. No hurried-through calls from a cell phone.

In person. Face-to-face. Man-to-man.

That's the only way Steve Yzerman would have it. Reports say that Ilitch wasn't the only one Yzerman met in person, saying goodbye.

Yzerman wasn't raised by Mike Ilitch or the Detroit Red Wings.

But this is where he became a man.

Even better.

Yzerman Should Say Yes to Tampa's Crummy GM Job

From the moment Steve Yzerman sat in the bowels of Joe Louis Arena that day in early July, 2006, you knew this time would come.

As Yzerman reflected on his 22-year playing career—every second of which was spent with the Red Wings—as he spoke of what it would be like to not have to lace up skates and put himself through physical Hell to get through another season, you knew this time would come.

The Red Wings eased Yzerman into the front office, a move that was as academic as moving yourself from the table after dinner.

They gave him a vice president’s title, but it was no joke. It wasn’t a ceremonial nod. This wasn’t Gordie Howe, circa 1971, when the Red Wings of the Bruce Norris ownership gave what Gordie called the “mushroom treatment.”

“They put me in a dark office, opened the door occasionally and dumped blank on me,” Gordie famously said.

Mike Ilitch is no Bruce Norris—thank God. When he promoted Yzerman, it was with a purpose. He was seamlessly moved from the rank and file to management. Then he started learning the ins and outs of running an NHL team from up high.

You could do a whole lot worse than to learn from the likes of Kenny Holland, Jim Nill, and Jimmy Devellano—the front office Goliaths who’ve been running the Red Wings for about 15 years now.

It was like interning in government and being surrounded by Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt.

Yzerman watched. He learned. He kept his mouth shut—which for him is as natural as breathing—and his eyes and ears open.

You knew this time would come.

You just knew, when Yzerman switched from hockey sweater to Armani suit, that someone would, one day, try to poach him from the Red Wings.

You knew it especially when he was named the director of hockey for Team Canada for the 2010 Winter Olympics. You knew it when he started to display, unsurprisingly, the adroit skills of putting together a hockey team from scratch.

You really knew it when Team Canada skated away with Olympic Gold, despite a rocky road to glory.

It was just a matter of time, when others would notice.

That time has come.

The Tampa Bay Lightning, an unremarkable franchise that, for all its unremarkableness, nonetheless stumbled onto a Stanley Cup six years ago, is courting Yzerman, reports say.

The Lightning wants Stevie Y to be their new GM, the scuttlebutt is.

This isn’t the brass ring of GM jobs. It’s beneath Yzerman, frankly, to go to work for a team that didn’t exist until 1992—when he was starting his 10th season as a player.

Going from the Red Wings—as solidly run of a franchise as any in pro sports—to the Lightning is like stopping midway through a lobster dinner and switching to Spam.

It’s beneath Yzerman to work for such a Mickey Mouse franchise, which needs three home dates to fill its arena, in a city that is as much of a hockey hotbed as Hades.

Someone of Yzerman’s stature deserves much more than being the GM of the Tampa Bay Freaking Lightning.

Yet, as much as this pains me to say it, he ought to take the job.

If Yzerman truly wants to run his own team—and he’s been on record more than once saying that he does—then he’s going to have to go somewhere else. There’s no opportunity for that in Detroit.

Holland ’s not going anywhere. Nill is the GM-in-waiting, anyway.

Yzerman ought to go to Tampa Bay precisely because it’s an insignificant franchise.

If the Lightning dropped off the face of the NHL Earth tomorrow, no one would notice, or miss them.

It’s a can’t-lose situation for Yzerman.

If he succeeds, great. If he fails, then what the hey—it’s the Lightning.

He’ll get another chance, no matter what happens in Tampa .

I suspect Yzerman is considering the Lightning job—possibly quite seriously.

He hasn’t dismissed the notion out of hand.

His latest remark was hardly a denial, when asked about the prospects of leaving an organization that’s been his hockey life for 27 years.

“My response is the same, and that is no comment,” Yzerman coyly said the other day.

If he wasn’t mulling it over, he’d have given an unequivocal “no.”

Yzerman’s mulling it over. It’s not a small decision.

His wife, Lisa, and their three daughters have only known Detroit as home, as a family. The oldest girl, Isabella, is 16. As the father of a high school sophomore, I know how popular it would be to announce a move from friends at that tender age of a girl’s social development.

Yzerman will forever have the Winged Wheel emblazoned on his chest. No matter how many jobs, no matter how many years go by, Yzerman will be a Red Wing. It’s what he is. Any GM job he takes will be what he does.

But it’s not easy to leave an organization that drafted you, nurtured you, and provided you with a lifetime’s worth of thrills and chills and spills—for 27 years.

Yzerman could do the polite thing, and continue to work for the Red Wings. There’s plenty more he can learn and do wearing a suit.

But he’ll never be the GM here.

If that’s what he wants, then he ought to leave. He ought to take the Tampa job.

But why not wait, you might ask. Why not see if something better, frankly, comes along?

It might. And it might not.

You think just because he’s Steve Yzerman, that he can write his own ticket?

It doesn’t always work that way.

How privileged we’ve been in Detroit . We’ve gotten to see Yzerman grow up twice.

We saw him as an 18-year-old rookie and laughed and cried with him for 14 years before that first Stanley Cup—the best one—in 1997. We saw him as a grizzled 37-year-old as he lifted Cup number three in 2002. We gasped as he went down like he’d been shot when a puck struck him square in the eye in 2004.

Now we are seeing him cutting his teeth as an executive.

The Lightning job isn’t much. But it’s there, apparently, if he wants it. By all accounts, Yzerman is the Lightning’s frontrunner. He might be the only runner.

It’s not much of a GM’s job. But he ought to take it.

You just knew this time would come.

Local Boy LaFontaine Missed, but Red Wings Did OK with Yzerman

He played hockey in Waterford, growing up in the northern Oakland County burg in the 1970s—a decade of horrors when it came to his local team, the Detroit Red Wings.

As he honed his skills as an adolescent and started depositing pucks into opposing goals with eye-popping frequency, the Red Wings were stumbling through the National Hockey League, soiling what had once been a tradition-rich franchise history.

As the 1980s arrived, his name started to become known beyond Waterford. It didn’t hurt that it had a bit of royalty to its sound.

Pat LaFontaine, from Waterford, was off to play junior hockey in Quebec, in a town called Verdun. He was 17 years old.

In his lone season in the Quebec Junior League, LaFontaine made a mockery of it.

In 70 games, LaFontaine, a center, scored 104 goals. He added 130 assists for 234 points—over three points a game.

It was obvious that the QMJHL wasn’t big enough to hold his talent.

Down I-75 from where LaFontaine grew up, the Red Wings were playing to half-empty houses at Joe Louis Arena. The team had a new owner—a pizza pie guy named Mike Ilitch—but the only thing that seemed to change at JLA was that Little Caesars pizza was being served officially at the concession stands. The product on the ice was still miserably bad.

But the Red Wings held the fourth overall choice in the 1983 draft. They’d have a good shot at nabbing LaFontaine off the board.

It was GM Jimmy Devellano’s first draft with the Red Wings. He was Ilitch’s first-ever Wings hire in 1982, but Jimmy D. joined the team too late to participate in the draft that year.

Folks around town salivated at the thought of what local kid Pat LaFontaine could do in a Red Wings sweater.

The Red Wings wanted LaFontaine. The kid, by all accounts, was open to playing NHL hockey back home after his one year hiatus spent in Quebec.

Devellano didn’t make his mark as a hockey rink rat by targeting just one player, though. He knew that things didn’t always work out the way you’d like. He’d have to be ready to select another player, should LaFontaine already be gone.

Red Wings fans didn’t care about anyone else, though. Pat LaFontaine grew up in Waterford, and he should play for the Red Wings, dammit!

The New York Islanders, Devellano’s old team—the one he helped build into a dynasty in the late-1970s—held the third overall pick. It was by sheer luck, through trade, that they had a pick so high, because the Isles were defending Stanley Cup champs.

Sure enough, Jimmy D’s team stuck it to their old employee, nabbing LaFontaine with the pick just prior to Detroit’s.

PUCK!

No matter; with people back in Detroit slugged in the gut, Devellano picked himself up from the mat, deeply disappointed, and went with his Plan B.

No one knew how to pronounce Steve Yzerman’s name when the news came that he was the newest Red Wing.

Some thought it was Eezer-man. Others said no, it’s Why-zerman.

Jimmy D. not only knew how to say it, he knew all about the kid attached to it.

Yzerman’s numbers while playing for Peterborough in the Ontario Junior League weren’t as impressive as LaFontaine’s, but numbers never tell the whole story.

Devellano knew that Yzerman, the son of an Ottawa politician, quiet as a mouse, could be a big-time star in the NHL.

They played a video clip of Devellano, speaking in his squeaky Canadian-laced voice, at his induction into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in 2006. He was talking about this new kid Yzerman, shortly after drafting him in the summer of ’83.

“We feel he can contribute right away,” Jimmy D. said. “My only concern is that because of his age – he’s only 18 – his strength is a question mark.”

Then, one of the biggest understatements in hockey history, as it turned out.

“But I think he’s gonna make it,” Devellano added.

Drafts in any sport are a crapshoot. All the studying and scouting in the world can’t predict what a kid is going to do once he starts playing the sport for money.

Even Yzerman himself didn’t really know.

I cornered him at Cobo after Jimmy D’s induction that October night in 2006.

Doesn’t it seem silly now, I asked, to see Jimmy speak about you in such uncertain terms?

Yzerman gave that bashful smile.

“Well,” he said, “not many people knew for sure back then, eh?”

I suppose not.

Monday, Yzerman will go into the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto on Monday. He’ll be inducted with two former teammates: snipers Brett Hull and Luc Robitaille.

It’ll be 26 years, and some change, since he arrived in Detroit with that funny last name and the baggage of NOT being Pat LaFontaine.

LaFontaine, for his part, had a fine NHL career. He was no draft bust. A quick check on the Internet gives the numbers: 468 goals, 545 assists, 1,013 points. But no Stanley Cups—and a career cut short thanks to concussions. LaFontaine was only 33 when he played his last NHL game.

Yzerman played until he was about a week shy of his 41^st birthday. He scored 692 goals, had 1,755 points, and won three Stanley Cups and the hearts of Red Wings fans forever. His jersey hangs in the rafters of Joe Louis Arena, next to those of Howe and Abel and Lindsay and the rest.

All because the New York Islanders, Jimmy’s old employers, decided that they wanted the kid from Waterford, Pat LaFontaine, for themselves.

We cursed and grumbled in Detroit, then Steve Yzerman suited up and started playing some hockey for the Red Wings.

Jimmy Devellano’s hunch was right.

“I think he’s gonna make it.”

Yeah, just a bit.

"Lucky Luc" Rolled The Dice In 2001, And Won The Jackpot

Eight summers ago, Luc Robitaille did a different turn on an old adage.

Normally, it's "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

Robitaille spun that a little bit and tried, "AFTER you beat 'em, join 'em."

It worked out. They didn't call him "Lucky Luc" for nothing.

Robitaille, along with sniper Brett Hull and All-World goalie Dominik Hasek, joined the Detroit Red Wings in the summer of 2001. Robitaille and Hull were free agents; Hasek came to the Wings in a trade.

Robitaille's Los Angeles Kings had upset the mighty Red Wings in the first round in '01, yet when it came time to make a decision about where he wanted to land next, Luc looked beyond that playoff derailing of the Red Wings.

Robitaille was 35 and had never won a Stanley Cup. He made it to the Finals in 1993 with the Kings, but no champagne.

"My wife and I discussed it. She asked me, 'Luc, where do you think you'd have the best chance at a Stanley Cup?' I said, 'Detroit.' So that was pretty much our focus," Robitaille told me yesterday during a conference call.

But this wasn't just any conference call. It was the call announcing the Hockey Hall of Fame Class of 2009.

Robitaille, along with Hull, Steve Yzerman, and Brian Leetch, was among the four player inductees. Longtime New Jersey Devils executive Lou Lamoriello will also be inducted.

So add Robitaille to the list of superstar players who ventured to Detroit seeking that missing brass NHL ring.

"When my agent called and said that he was talking to (Red Wings GM) Kenny Holland, I got excited," Robitaille went on. "Then, he called and said a deal was done and my wife and I were very happy."

According to Luc, there really was no other team in the mix for his services eight years ago.

Some have called the 2001-02 Red Wings one of the best teams in NHL history. It's a hard point to argue, if you're going to simply compare rosters.

"Sometime during the season, someone said that we had maybe 10 future Hall of Famers on the team," Robitaille said. "And looking back, it was an amazing team, for sure."

The '02 Wings won the Presidents' Trophy for best overall regular season record, then eventually captured the Stanley Cup, ousting the Carolina Hurricanes in five tough games.

Not that the Cup run was a breeze. The Red Wings started things out by losing the first two games, both at home, in the first round to Vancouver. Hasek was a major culprit.

But Detroit re-grouped and won the next four games.


Robitaille (left) kisses the Cup in 2002 with Steve Duchesne


The highlight was a grueling, seven-game series with the Colorado Avalanche in the conference finals -- the last good playoff series the two teams have played.

Yzerman was also on the conference call yesterday.

As team captain, I wondered, was there added pressure to win, since ownership went out and secured such immeasurable talent that summer?

"You know, there's always pressure to win (in Detroit)," Yzerman said. "We won the Cup in 1998, then we kind of had trouble getting out of the second round the next three years. But that [2002 team] was a special team--and I think Luc would agree--in that we just played the games and didn't really worry about the playoffs until they rolled around."

I asked Robitaille what it was like playing with Yzerman and his exemplary leadership skills.

"I don't want to talk about Stevie while he's on the line. He might get cocky or something," he said, as everyone laughed -- including, and especially, Yzerman himself.

Hull wasn't present at the call, but it was pointed out by one of the writers that it's not too often that three members of the same Cup-winning team all go into the Hall of Fame together.

2002 was also the year that Yzerman had knee surgery and was in great pain for most of the playoffs.

"We had so many great players," Yzerman said. "We knew we had something special,and I wanted to be a part of it. But like I said, we didn't focus on the playoffs or put extra pressure on ourselves to win the Stanley Cup during the season. We kind of just let that (playoff time) roll around and dealt with it then."

And dealt with it they did.

Robitaille got his Cup, but despite playing in 81 games the following season, Luc wasn't so lucky, tallying just 11 goals and ending up in new coach Dave Lewis's doghouse. He re-signed with the Kings that summer, his original team, and finished there in 2006.

Robitaille has a sense of history, as he proved yesterday.

One of the men the NHL designated to announce the inductees was Pat Quinn, who read Robitaille's brief bio before announcing Luc's name.

After he was announced, Robitaille said, "Pat, you were my first coach (in the NHL). So it's great that you're the one announcing my name."

Hull teamed with his father Bobby to be the only father-son combo in NHL history to each score over 600 goals. Brett Hull won Cups in 1999 with Dallas--scoring the Cup-winning goal in controversial fashion, against Hasek, no less--and in 2002 with Detroit, obviously. He's currently in the Dallas Stars organization, having just been re-designated from his position as co-general manager.

Leetch, of course, was the brilliant defenseman for the New York Rangers, an American kid--born in Texas, no less. He won a Stanley Cup in 1994, helping the Broadway Blues snap a 54-year drought.

Lamoriello has been with the Devils since 1987, and has had a couple different stints as the team's coach. But he made his mark as one of the shrewdest, most adept GMs in the business. His Devils teams captured Cups in 1995, 2000, and 2003.

Yzerman At Peace; Skates Don't Beckon Him

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

Red Wings legend retires, gets kicked upstairs to the front office. Becomes a team vice president, but has no real job description.

It’s still happening in Detroit, but this time all’s well.

The Red Wings – most notably owner Bruce Norris and GM Ned Harkness – levied such obscene behavior on Gordie Howe, once upon a time. Actually, I have years for you: 1971 and ’72. That’s when Gordie hung up the skates, started wearing a suit and tie, and went to his office inside Olympia Stadium to watch the paint dry.

“They gave me the mushroom treatment,” Howe said in an oft-repeated line. “They kept me in the dark and every once in a while they opened the door and dumped (manure) on me.”

Only, Gordie didn’t say manure.

The Red Wings, on the surface, seem to be doing it again, this time to Steve Yzerman.

“I still have no specific job description with the Red Wings,” Yzerman was telling us media types via phone the other day. He’s an Executive Vice President now, Steve Yzerman is, and that’s been his title ever since he announced his retirement as a player back in July 2006. And though his words indicate that the Red Wings don’t have anything for him to do, a la Mr. Hockey, rest easy.

“I hang around the team a lot,” Yzerman said, clarifying his previous statement. “I’m trying to learn both the business side and the personnel side. I travel with the team sometimes. I spend a lot of time watching hockey.

“Between the Internet and TV, you hear a lot. I get forwarded a lot of e-mails.”

What Yzerman is hearing “a lot” about these days, from the Net and TV, is the Olympics. And with good reason. For Yzerman, you see, is the Executive Director of Team Canada for the 2010 Winter Games. That means he’s in charge, basically, of putting together the team, from top to bottom, that will compete in Vancouver for his native country. He was named to the post last October.

So that’s taking up the bulk of his time – but not as a distraction from any sort of “mushroom treatment” that the Red Wings are heaping on him. Yzerman is content to be the learning VP – functioning as a sponge among the team’s vaunted brain trust of GM Ken Holland, Senior VP Jimmy Devellano, and assistant GM Jim Nill. It’s a tact that Yzerman says he’s using with Team Canada’s management team, which includes current and former GMs like Holland, Doug Armstrong, and Kevin Lowe. Oh, and there’s one more hockey person that Yzerman leans on for advice.

“Wayne Gretzky told me that he’s always available,” Yzerman said of The Great One, who is functioning as a senior adviser for Team Canada, having once performed the job that Yzerman currently has. “Wayne was one of the first people I talked to [after getting the Team Canada job]. Having Kenny (Holland) around is invaluable.”

Is there a danger, I asked, of getting too much advice?

“Yeah, I think so,” Yzerman said. “But at the end of the day, I have to make the decisions. I like talking to people, listening to people. But I’m the one who makes the decisions.”

Howe made no real decisions with the Red Wings. The shameful treatment he received was a big reason why No. 9 retired from retirement and joined his sons in the fledgling World Hockey Association in 1973.

But if you’re wondering, as I had been, if Yzerman is tempted to put the skates back on and slap the puck around, wonder no longer. I hit him cold with the question.

Does this Olympic process, being so close to players and pursuing Gold, give you the itch to compete at the ultimate level – that of player?

“I don’t miss playing at all,” Yzerman told me. “The only time I thought about playing was when I was watching the World Junior Championships [in Moscow]. I was watching those kids play and I got kind of envious. But the more I’m exposed to the management side, the less I miss playing.”

So there you have it. The skates don’t beckon him, not one bit, save that moment of weakness in Russia. The suit and tie fit him nicely, thank you.


Yzerman: He's gotten used to this look


It’s all about trying to win Gold for Team Canada, and the more you hear Yzerman talk about that, the more he sounds like an executive, and not just someone who plays one on TV.

“I want a well-balanced team,” he said of his vision for Team Canada. “One that’s solid defensively. Balanced teams win, whether it’s the Stanley Cup or in the Olympics,” Yzerman, who should know, added. “We want to attack and defend. We want to play with the puck. Because once you lose it at this level, it’s so hard to get it back.”

So, a team like the Red Wings, basically?

“Well, the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup last year,” Yzerman said, as if we needed reminding.

For the record, Yzerman says he and his team of suits will name a coaching staff shortly after the Stanley Cup Finals in June. He talked of wanting to know strengths and weaknesses and personalities of coaching candidates before rendering a decision.

“Just like how we’re watching players, we’re also watching coaches,” Yzerman said, sounding very executive-ish.

The playing days are three years in the rearview mirror now, and fading fast. Steve Yzerman is at peace, very much so.

“It’s been a great transition,” he said, “from being a player to being in management.”

So that’s one thing The Captain has on Mr. Hockey. By far.

Memorial Day Weekend Hockey Once Yzerman’s Time

They sat all in a row, in one of the cramped cubbies adjacent to Joe Louis Arena’s ancient and too-small press box. Five suits – the stuffed shirts of Red Wings hockey. Hall of Famers and icons.

Scotty Bowman, nine-time Stanley Cup winner and one of the all-time greatest coaches in any game, from hockey to tiddly-winks. Jimmy Devellano, as Red Wing as you can get without ever having slipped a hockey sweater on. Kenny Holland, one of the deans of league GMs. Mark Howe, three-time Cup finalist and a fine defenseman who toiled in pro hockey for 22 years, yet is still only the second-best player in his own family.

And SteveYzerman, the youngest and newest of the stuffed shirts.

Bowman is still employed by the Red Wings, in that purposely ambiguous role of consultant. Devellano is an executive vice president. Holland is in his 11^th year as GM. And Howe was back in town – a rarity, as he is usually elsewhere, scoping out other teams in his duties as an advanced scout.

I looked over at the stuffed shirts often during breaks in play of Saturday’s Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals, and four of them looked relaxed and seemed to be enjoying the action as easily as if they were watching the game from their sofas. Only one of them tended to lean forward, hand on chin, at times looking like he wanted to jump from his seat. Not until late in the third period, the game well in hand for Detroit, did the fifth and youngest stuffed shirt tend to relax.

Playing hockey on Memorial Day weekend is a privilege – earned and not assumed, as if a right. And it was the youngest of the Red Wings’ management core who knows that better than anyone.

Steve Yzerman was that fidgety stuffed shirt last night. And I can only imagine what must be going through his mind right about now. Down below, the next captain, Nicklas Lidstrom, played his usual robotically brilliant game on the blueline – a predictably major reason why the Red Wings smothered and shutout the star-struck Pittsburgh Penguins, 4-0, to move in front at the end of the first turn in these 2008 Finals. But I doubt that seeing how Lidstrom had things under control somehow lessened the angst Yzerman experienced last night.

This used to be Yzerman’s time – when hockey was a diversion from the holiday grilling and was sharing the headlines with the Indianapolis 500. Not always did Stevie Y’s teams make it to Memorial Day, but when they did, it all started with the one wearing the “C”.

There was the occasional locker room pep talk – given when Yzerman felt things slipping away from his hockey club. They were few, but because of their rarity, they became legendary. Some words in St. Louis, one year. A gathering in the friendly skies, jetting out to Vancouver in an 0-2 series hole in 2002. And some others. But words were never Yzerman’s deal. He was about pushing himself, physically and emotionally, and leading by example.

Lidstrom is that way; he’s eloquent in his speech but he’s no Knute Rockne. He, too, prefers to just play hockey to the very best of his ability and be a pied piper that way.

Yzerman says he doesn’t miss the game on the ice. Hasn’t really even put his skates on, to hear him tell it. He’s content to be a stuffed shirt and learn about front officing. And there are dumber folks to learn from than Holland, Bowman, and Devellano.

But what must Yzerman be thinking now, his team on the verge, perhaps, of another Stanley Cup? Can he truly say this morning, without crossing his fingers behind him, that he doesn’t miss playing? He might not miss the physical pain he put himself through in order to be in the lineup, but is he really impervious to the allure of playoff hockey competition, some of the toughest, most draining in all of sports?

I would have asked him these things but he was huddled up, away from the media, along with the other stuffed shirts. There are no more post-game comments from Yzerman, no more patient, hang-on-every-word answers coming from him under the brightness of the TV lights and the pushiness of the hand-held microphones shoved into his face. Post-game for Steve Yzerman now is an office and a few of his management types, hashing over what just happened; what else is there to do? All the work by the shirts is done. All that’s left now is for the coach to coach and the players to play. And for the sophomore vice president to perhaps gaze longingly at the other side of the hall, where the Red Wings’ dressing room is located.

If the Wings capture this Cup, which they should, it will be the first one since 1955 that didn’t have Steve Yzerman on its roster. There was a time when no one thought the Red Wings could win a Cup WITH Yzerman, and now we are wading through a period where some have wondered if they could win one WITHOUT Yzerman. No disrespect to Lidstrom, of course. But look how long it took the team to win one after Gordie Howe retired.

Memorial Day weekend hockey. Some of the best – for players, coaches, media, and fans. Oh, it’s fun for the stuffed shirts, too, but maybe not as much for the one who only two years ago was on the other side of that hallway.

Steve Yzerman had his time. I just wonder how tough it is for him to let go of it.