So much to say

A lot has happened in the past couple of days. As a Detroit and Northwestern sports fan, it has pretty much been the pits.

Randy Walker passed away.

Ben Wallace was lost to the Bulls.

And, most critical to me, Steve Yzerman finally hung up his skates.

I was at the Mariners game in Seattle tonight where Jeremy Bonderman mauled the home team, which was fun to see, but other than that it's been a rough week.

Yzerman officially announced his retirement on Monday afternoon in Joe Louis Arena, while I was out at Rainier National Park hiking up to Eagle Peak with Amy. I had no cell phone, and there would not have been any cell service. Nor were there any TVs or newspapers. I literally had no way to know what was going on in Detroit as we climbed from 2,800 to 6,000 feet.


There are an amazing number of memories I associate with Yzerman. First is the tenacity he showed during the 1988 season, coming back from his first knee injury to return against the Oilers in the Campbell Conference Finals. We lost that series to Gretzky and co., of course, but no one could ever have imagined that Yzerman would play his last game in the same building 18 years later in a loss to the team coached by an old gritty Oiler center.

The next year, in 1989, Stevie came to our hockey school. Even though he wasn't there long, he made an impression as a humble and likable athlete - the kind of guy we all wanted to be when we grew up and played for the Red Wings.

Over the years, I saw him live in Detroit, Los Angeles, Anaheim, San Jose, Raleigh, and Minnesota. He got the same reception in all those places, from both our fans and theirs. No one was ever ignorant of being in the presence of greatness when Detroit came to town. I got to see him in his last game in California. I even got to see the Wings' last win of 2006 (against Dallas), and even though Stevie sat out, it was the last regular season home win he'd ever be part of.

Nothing will ever be like 2002. In 2002, Yzerman sustained so much knee damage that he eventually needed an osteotomy, yet led the Wings to a Stanley Cup and played a huge role in helping Canada win Gold in Salt Lake. Canada won that game on my birthday in 2002, and I watched the 3rd period from the New Orleans airport after visiting with the college crew there for the weekend. It was a turning point for me. As I trained for the AIDS Ride that summer, I kept thinking about all the sacrifice that Yzerman made for his team, and how much harder he had to work than I ever had. That made it easy to go up long hills and keep pressing, no matter how tired I felt.


After going down 2-0 to Vancouver in the first round of the 2002 playoffs, our fans threw Hasek jerseys on the ice. They booed the team off the ice. Yzerman said not to worry, that our goaltending would be just fine. So we won a game in Vancouver when Nick Lidstrom's goal from center ice turned the momentum around, then we won another on a Sunday night when Yzerman scored from his butt. A shutout in the next game, then back to Vancouver for game 6, when Chelios had 4 assists in a 6-3 win. Erasing the Blues in the next round, then the legendary series with the Avs capped off by the 7-0 win in Game 7. A grueling, hard-earned win in 3OT in game 3 in the Finals in Carolina pulled the Stanley Cup within our grasp, and Detroit won in 5. Those were the days of the dream team, the days when Yzerman could say "we will come back and win" and he was right. Those days are long gone.


It was the right time for him to step away. The team needs a major makeover, a strategic shift. The "best" team no longer wins the Stanley Cup, and rarely even makes it to the round of 4. All that matters is team play in the playoffs. Having good goaltending is nice, but the last 3 Finals have featured streaky goalies that were quiet for 82 regular season games, so even that is nothing to hang your hat on anymore. Team play and discipline. The Wings enjoy playing together, but they don't play as a team when the pressure is on anymore. It's time for us to be younger, quicker, and hit harder. Iron Will just doesn't win games on its own anymore like it did in 2002. Not with teams like Anaheim, Tampa and Edmonton out there.

It hasn't sunk in that he's gone. Maybe that's because so many things are happening - I am loving the internship, we are planning the wedding, I am far from hockey country, and there were some tragic moments recently. Even Ken Lay, ahem, died of an apparent heart attack.

It was nice to be on top that mountain and just think about everything and nothing. Now Yzerman gets a chance to do it for a while. Even though I haven't earned it, he most certainly has.

Take a look at YouTube for some cool tribute videos. I stayed up too late watching them last night and overslept today.

I will miss you. We all will. But now I know one thing. I already know everything I ever need to tell my kids about life. I learned it from #19. Thank you.