Henrik Zetterberg gave the Detroit Red Wings his entire NHL career and has spent the years since his retirement saying very little about them publicly. Asked by Swedish newspaper Expressen about the state of the club he captained, he didn’t hold back.
“It has been brutal,” Zetterberg said. “Things always happen, and there’s a difference between what comes out and what doesn’t, but it’s sad. It was very hard to watch Steve step down.”
He stopped short of explaining what he knows, while making his own position clear.
“I’m not going to go into the reasons for it or what happened,” he said. “But it was obviously very difficult, because I thought it was wrong.”
Steve Yzerman in Detroit:
| Seasons as a player | Cups won as captain | Seasons as GM | Playoff appearances as GM |
|---|---|---|---|
| 22 | 3 | 7 | 0 |
Why did Steve Yzerman step down as Red Wings GM?
The club announced it on July 15 with no advance warning, two months after captain Dylan Larkin had asked to be traded and shortly after another late-season collapse took Detroit out of contention following the Olympic break. Seven seasons as general manager had produced no playoff appearances at all.
Yzerman moved to a senior advisor role working under governor and chief executive Chris Ilitch, and Detroit began a search for his replacement that still hasn’t concluded. Shawn Horcoff has been running the department on an interim basis since September.
For Zetterberg, who played alongside Yzerman before succeeding him as the face of the franchise, the ending doesn’t match the man.
“He’s the icon I’ve been closest to and played with the most. I’ve really seen how much he has meant to Detroit and to the generation that won the Cups in the late nineties and early 2000s,” Zetterberg said. “His whole journey and the way he was as a player. He’s the captains’ captain in my eyes.”
“It’s sad that it ends this way, when he even came home to Detroit and took over as general manager.”
The old group has stayed close through it.
“Yes, we’re definitely in touch. A lot of us are, because several are still inside the club,” Zetterberg said. “It’s a great group, and we have a lot of history together.”
Yzerman played all 22 of his NHL seasons in Detroit, captained the club for 19 of them, won three Stanley Cups and had his number retired by the franchise.
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