Saturday, February 23, 2002
Stevie Y flyin' high
By BRUCE GARRIOCH -- Sun Media
SALT LAKE CITY -- It was one of the most difficult decisions of Steve Yzerman's career: Should he bow out of the Olympics for the good of his country or report for the same reason?
Coming off arthroscopic knee surgery just two weeks before the tournament began, Team Canada executive director Wayne Gretzky and coach Pat Quinn left the decision up to Yzerman.
"Steve has been marvelous. I always knew him as a great player, but he's more," Quinn said. "He's a tremendous leader, his humility is tremendous. He does everything for his team and that's the mentality we want.
LEADER
"That's why he's a leader. He's a walking example of things you should do to be successful. You have faith in quality people because of their constants. He's humble, he's proud and he cares. He has great self respect.
"We asked him to disqualify himself if (he felt) he wasn't going to be able to help this team. It was his call. He made a hard decision, but he has been outstanding," Quinn said.
Playing on a line with captain Mario Lemieux and winger Paul Kariya, it's easy to see Yzerman is in pain as he skates toward the bench after every shift.
However, It was Yzerman who opened the scoring for Canada yesterday in its 7-1 win over Belarus. Andrei Mezin tipped the puck right to him and Yzerman made no mistake as he put it home to give his country the lead.
"You try to relax as much as you can in this situation," Yzerman said. "But you really find that you get tied up in it. We just have to do the best that we can do out there.
"The one thing we don't want to do is race around out there trying to create scoring chances. I think what we have to do is play a lot more technical game on the big ice surface. We've got to hold on to the puck and wait for plays to develop. That's one thing we've become better at."
Yzerman has been the key on a line which has a lot of talent and he gets all the credit from Lemieux.
"(Yzerman) is a smart player," Lemieux said. "He controls the puck very well and he sees the ice well. He's able to pick up the open guy and since he came on our line it has been a puck-control kind of game. He creates turnovers and that's why we cashed in on our opportunities."
But Yzerman doesn't like to talk about himself. Instead, he prefers to assign credit in other places.
"It's good for a lot of guys to get on the board," Yzerman said. "We've had a lot of shots that weren't going (in) against the Czechs and Finns so it's good to get some goals. When we're scoring, we can just relax and play."
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2002 Games Men's Hockey Coverage
