Steve Yzerman carried a reddish crescent-moon dent where the bridge of his nose met the middle of his forehead, and there was a specific reason for it.
A Paul Coffey slapshot caught him flush in the days before the 1999 All-Star Game in Tampa. It broke his nose and several other small bones in his face, and he was taken off the ice and wheeled out toward an ambulance.
On the way, according to a Maclean’s profile written by James Deacon in February 2000, he called over to the Detroit Red Wings‘ equipment manager.
“I think I’ll need a visor on my helmet if I’m going to play in Tampa,” Yzerman said.
He didn’t play in Tampa. The doctors saw to that.
Steve Yzerman’s best scoring season:
| Season | Goals | Assists | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1988-89 | 65 | 90 | 155 |
Did Steve Yzerman always want to be a GM?
He was 34 and sitting over lunch in the players’ lounge at Joe Louis Arena, beside a huge black-and-white photograph of Gordie Howe and Alex Delvecchio, when the conversation turned to what came after the playing.
“I have always wanted to be a general manager,” Yzerman said. “I follow what teams do, the trades they make, and I try to work out the good ones from the bad ones. It’d be a real challenge to put a team together yourself.”
He got both jobs eventually, winning a Stanley Cup running Tampa Bay before returning to Detroit, where he stepped down in July 2026 after seven seasons without a playoff appearance.
Deacon also caught him in a less composed moment. Toronto winger Garry Valk had slashed him on the knee, in the gap between one pad and the next, and Yzerman lost it.
“To be honest, I was so mad I lost my composure,” he said. “It wasn’t a proud moment on my part. I came totally unglued.”
What he actually did was spin and chop down on Valk’s stick so hard that his own snapped. Then he skated to the bench, picked up a replacement, collected a loose puck in the corner and fed Sergei Fedorov for a goal.
He also had a dry observation about the shape of his own fame. Yzerman scored 65 goals in a season once and spent most of his prime being overshadowed by Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux, then reinvented himself as a two-way center under Scotty Bowman and won back-to-back Cups in 1997 and 1998.
“I get more attention for being a 20-goal scorer than when I scored 50,” he said, chuckling at the irony.
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