An Ongoing Tribute to The Captain

Last Monday, October 6, was the 22nd anniversary of Steve Yzerman being named captain of the Detroit Red Wings hockey club.


I started watching hockey during that 1986-87 season. It was also my first year of Mite hockey. Dad bought us the A Matter of Time video from that season, and I can clearly remember the narrator talking about Yzerman being named captain while the video showed Yzerman in his locker.

My point is that Steve Yzerman represents the history of my involvement with hockey as a player and fan, and as a man he embodies certain attributes of character and talent that I admire. It is these characterisitics that transformed him from the captain to The Captain in the hearts and minds of Detroit sports fans.

I'd like to pay some sort of tribute to the guy. (Blog entires are an inadequate and tawdry forum, but it's all I've got.) Periodically throughout this season, I would like to honor Yzerman with a series of "Who Knew?" questions. Really, who knew that Yzerman would turn out to be the player and man that he is? He could have been Alexander Daigle. But he wasn't. Without further ado, the first statement of the series:



Who knew that the kid from Cranbrook and Nepean with the Johnny Depp face had the grim determination of William Tecumseh Sherman and the moral integrity of Optimus Prime?



Notes:

• I missed Saturday night's game against Ottawa as I was at the MSU/Northwestern game up in Evanston, and then having dinner with the family. But the Wings won, and MSU won 37-20, so it was a good sporting day all around. I would also like to state for the record that I would like UM to win some games so my Wolverine friends will stop moping. They are practically on suicide watch at this point.
• I'm missing the game tonight as I have bowling league. Our team is called The Pantheon, and I roll under the name Shiva the Destroyer. It's embroidered on my shirt.