Quotes from Steve Yzerman

I hope people like me and appreciate me the way I am.

Playoff hockey is the best way to market your team. It's the best way to grow your fan base and give hope to your players and for them to develop.

We penalize and suspend players for making contact with the head while checking, in an effort to reduce head injuries, yet we still allow fighting. We're stuck in the middle and need to decide what kind of sport do we want to be. Either anything goes and we accept the consequences, or take the next step and eliminate fighting.

Balanced is probably what I am, although that's just a polite way to say that you don't do anything very well.

We have two tables on our airplane that are set up with the games.

It's true that in Canada, we pride ourselves on the game, and we like to think we're the dominant hockey nation in the world.

I also feel I adapted. I was willing to try to fit into any role. The way I figured, it was always up to me to prove my worth, that I deserved to be here.

As a kid in British Columbia, going back a long way, I learned to skate.

I consider the Detroit Red Wings one of the greatest franchises in any sport. For a player to come in and play, it's so special to wear the jersey.

When it gets to this point, it's just hard to pull the trigger.

There used to be an old thing where every team had a heavy bag in their locker room for people to punch, but again, it was more about conditioning because if you hit a heavy bag for a minute, it feels like your arms are about to fall off.

Very few cities in the NHL have the history or the following of the Detroit Red Wings.

It's been a great honor for me to be a player for the Detroit Red Wings, to play for an Original Six franchise. I know I'm far from perfect, but I learned a lot.

We have to get better at that. All of the Stanley Cup winning teams throughout the past few seasons, when they needed to play defense, they did it. If you can play defense, that's when you know it's game over.

And for the team, I always tried to do the right thing.

I wore No. 19 because of Bryan Trottier. I liked the overall aspect of his game. I liked the way he conducted himself on the ice. He was a quiet guy. He played really hard; just a good all-around, prototypical center man who could do everything.

When you're on the ice, you have very little time, you see very little, and everything happens really quick.

I'm exhausted trying to stay healthy.

I look forward to a lot more free time, at least initially, with my wife, Lisa, and our three children.

It's almost like you see too much, because when it happens for real, everything flies at you so fast, you never get a sense of the ice and where everyone is at that one moment.

Whether somebody is really competent - whether he has a good hockey mind, whether he's a good person to lead a hockey club - is something determined over a long period of time, not one tournament.

The 70's hair with the long on the sides, just doesn't look good coming down the sides of the helmet.

I'm exhausted trying to stay healthy.

I hope people like me and appreciate me the way I am.