Wayne Gretzky's Ghost by Roy Macgregor Page A

and will almost certainly require surgery in the off-season. It is, today, hard to believe that for years after Scotty Bowman came here in 1993, the Detroit coach was not a great believer in Yzerman, whom he regarded as somewhat one-dimensional. He fell out of favour. He was, at one time, on the verge of being shipped off to the Ottawa Senators, where it was presumed he would quickly live out his career and soon be gone. He was seen, then, as a brilliant player who could not quite deliver, the Stanley Cup just slightly beyond his grasp.
    â€œA guy like Yzerman,” former Montreal Canadiens general manager Serge Savard once said, “he’s never won anything.”
    Always there were doubts. He was twice cut from Canada Cup lineups and had even reached a point where he wondered himself if he was a winner. After that first Stanley Cup win five years ago he admitted, “I don’t have to battle other people’s doubts, or even my doubts, for that matter.” The new confidence changed him. He ceased having problems with Bowman as if, at last, each understood the other—though there may, in fact, be no understanding to be had for Bowman’s coaching genius.
    â€œHow to get along with him,” Yzerman said earlier this week, “is to show up, work hard, and keep your mouth shut.” And then he paused, thinking to add one more critical point: “And play well defensively.”
    He is thirty-seven now, and while some have suggested the wonky knee may mean the Hall of Fame will come earlier than expected, others are convinced he has found new life with this late arrival of such success. Three Stanley Cups, after all, are one more than Lemieux, one short of Gretzky—the two figures in whose shadows he has skated all these years.
    â€œAge,” he now says, “has really become irrelevant in the league. It doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to be the same team five years from now, but age right now means nothing.”
    In fact, it does mean something significant: experience.
    Injuries began to take a terrible toll on Yzerman. He played but sixteen games in 2002–03, scoring twice. The next year he recovered to 51 points but the following year was lost to the owners’ lockout. He scored 14 goals and 20 assists in 2005–06 and then chose retirement. His 1,755 points left him sixth in all-time scoring and he was the longest-serving captain in NHL history. In 2009, he entered the Hall of Fame and in 2010 was named general manager of the Tampa Bay Lightning
.
SAINT PATRICK OF THE NETS
(
National Post
, May 29, 2001)
    T ucked into a corner of Patrick Roy’s locker in the Colorado Avalanche’s suburban practice facility is a small photograph of Bobby Orr in a Chicago Blackhawks uniform. The two Hockey Hall-of-Famers—one ensconced, one on his way—have much in common despite their different eras and different positions, for just as Bobby Orr revolutionized the way defence is played in the modern game, Patrick Roy has done the same for goaltending.
    Where they may part company is in the second uniform. Bobby Orr looks out of sorts out of a Boston Bruins sweater. Patrick Roy—twice a Stanley Cup champion with the Montreal Canadiens, twice winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy as the Habs’ most valuable player in the playoffs—is today almost as familiar in the maroon, blue, grey and white of the Avalanche as he once was in the red, white and blue of
Les Glorieux
.
    It is now nearly six years since that fall evening in 1995 when the Detroit Red Wings trounced the Canadiens 11–1 and a furious Roy announced that “I’ve played my last game in Montreal” when coach Mario Tremblay finally relented and pulled him off the ice. But time is only part of the story. In the years since, Patrick Roy has delivered one Stanley Cup almost immediately to the Avalanche, and is three victories away from a second. He is, once again, counted among