Steve Yzerman returned to the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit this past week for a game in which his Tampa Bay Lightning faced off against the Detroit Red Wings. I caught the game on Versus, as I typically try to catch Red Wings games when they're on. You see, the Red Wings are the most important sports team there is to me.
I'm not sure why that is. We have the Red Wings, the Tigers, the Lions and the Pistons in Detroit. Professional basketball stopped appealing to me by the turn of the millennium and really, even before that, the Pistons were never a team I had my eye on - they often put up solid teams, but never a marquee guy you watched for - no Jordan or Ewing or Magic. And we got to see a lot of Jordan in Detroit. There really was no act in basketball in the '90s that compared. But that's another discussion for another day. The Tigers were decent - they had memorable guys like Cecil Fielder and remarkable guys like Lou Whittaker and Alan Trammel. But they didn't contend in the '90s like they did in the '80s. The Lions had Barry Sanders, who was to the NFL what Jordan was to the NBA. That might be an exaggeration, but it felt like it to Detroiters - and quite frankly, there's never been anyone like Barry. But the Lions were never particularly great, either.
Sometimes in sports, a team captures magic. You can feel it around them. I felt it with the Red Wings before anyone else and it's for that reason that the Wings are first and foremost in my heart. I'll remember the moment vividly for all my life - I'm sitting up as a kid, 12 or 13 years old, watching Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals. It's at Joe Louis. It's against the Philadelphia Flyers, who were favored to win the series, and yet, these young, upstart Red Wings have a 3-0 series lead and a 1-0 lead in the game in the second period. And Darren McCarty takes a pass at center ice. He pulls out a truly awesome deke on the Flyers' defenseman, then follows it up with another on All-Star goalie Ron Hextall, backhanding the puck into a virtually empty net. I remember being absolutely slack-jawed. It was a move you expected from Wayne Gretzky. McCarty was our enforcer - our resident beat-'em-up bad boy. He didn't score goals, at least not like that. And yet, there it was. And the Joe Louis Arena erupted. I'd never seen anything like it. The place went nuts. Right there, right then, that series ended and everyone knew it. The Red Wings knew it. The fans knew it. The Flyers knew it. The place rocked for the rest of the game. There was magic in it, magic I still see and feel when I see replays or videos of it now. It just coursed through the place. I knew, when that puck hit the net, when the Joe erupted, that my team was going to win it all. It wasn't the first Detroit sports championship of my lifetime, but it was the first I was actively cheering for; the first I was emotionally invested in.
A week later, Vladimir Konstantinov, a Red Wings defenseman, was in a car crash with a team masseuse and chauffeur. Konstantinov was paralyzed. It was a sobering moment for a city that was still celebrating. I remember it being a shock, as if a family member or, at least, a good friend had been hurt. I remember there being vigils. I remember the city pouring its heart out to a man whose only words in English had come through a translator. But he was one of ours. He was a Red Wing. When the season started, it was never spoken that I can recall, but it seemed like everyone knew... the Wings played knowing it, the fans seemed to know - we were going to win the Stanley Cup again, for Vladimir Konstantinov. We did. And when the buzzer went off and the game ended, who was wheeled onto the ice but Vladimir Konstantinov, in his jersey. And when Steve Yzerman handed the Cup off, it was to set it on Konstantinov's lap. The team surrounded him at that time, a moment that I have a photograph of, set onto a marble plaque that hangs in my office, because of what that meant. Because that's the kind of team the Red Wings are. It's the kind of city Detroit is. It's a big part of why I'll always hold the Red Wings a bit higher than the Tigers, Lions and Pistons. And sure, a long playoff-appearance streak helps. They're the winningest Detroit team of my life. But that's not my first thought. I think of guys who spend their careers in Detroit - Yzerman and Lidstrom, for example. I think of the Joe Louis Arena erupting, of the magic of that fateful McCarty goal. I think of Vladimir Konstantinov, on the ice in a wheelchair, the Stanley Cup on his lap and the Red Wings surrounding him. That's what I think of.
Sports are a trivial thing on the surface. Men battling each other to throw or hit an object into a larger receptacle for metaphysical points. On the surface, it doesn't mean a lot. And yet, somehow, these contests define entire cities, entire populations. People gravitate towards them. They bleed for the game. Fans weep tears of sorrow, tears of joy. Because sports go beyond the game itself, you know. It's about people, about relationships. It's about magic and destiny. It's about someone like Vladimir Konstantinov, paralyzed in a horrible accident, being on the ice for the celebration a year later. It's about Steve Yzerman playing his entire career as a Red Wing, being an icon to the city, growing up in front of the eyes of every Detroit hockey fan, from being a wide-eyed 19 year-old to growing up to be the face of the franchise, becoming a leader before our eyes. It's about watching a city's worth of people set aside multitudes of difference in favor of a single commonality - loyalty to a sports team.
Yzerman returned to Detroit this week. The Red Wings did him the honor of a brief video tribute during the first commercial break; the fans did him the honor of a deserved standing ovation. We love Steve Yzerman, or Stevie Y as we know him, in Detroit. Steve Yzerman, a good sport, came to the ice to wave to the crowd as it ended, to receive the honor. But he looked the slightest bit uncomfortable during it. But that's Stevie Y - he never hogged a spotlight. It was always about the team, always about the game. And for him, it still is, it always will be. It was an unavoidable event - a tribute to Yzerman on his first game back in Detroit after leaving. It was a formality on all sides; something the Red Wings were obligated to do, something that Yzerman knew would happen. He deserves every tribute, but he's not the kind of person who focuses on that or really cares; he's about the game, about his team, about getting points on that night. That attitude is his legacy, the one that builds champions, the one that earns these inconvenient tributes. In the era of the diva athlete, it's no wonder that Detroit loves Steve Yzerman, it's no wonder that we admire him and we love the Red Wings he helped build. He just went to work, did his job, and built something wonderful.
No comments:
Post a Comment