FanHouse Steve Yzerman

In an age of look-at-me professional athletes, full of boasting, silly taunting and big celebrations over routine plays, Steve Yzerman is a reminder that the best and most talented shine all the brighter for humble behavior.

The longtime Red Wings captain, and a three-time Stanley Cup winner as a player, enters the Hall of Fame as a winner on the ice and off, a gentleman respected by his peers and adored by his fans.

Yzerman was, and is, classy and understated, the embodiment of old-fashioned values of sportsmanship and personal accountability.

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When Joe Sakic officially announces his retirement, the NHL will not only be losing one of its best players of all-time, it's also going to be losing one of its best leaders and captains, and from nearly all accounts, an incredibly classy person. A rarity in the modern sports culture, Sakic spent his entire 20-year career with the same organization (Quebec/Colorado), scoring 625 goals and finishing with 1,641 points (eighth most all-time).

The NHL's Hall of Fame class of 2009 features a reunion of the Detroit Red Wings' 2001-02 Stanley Cup Championship team, and the completion of the best father-son duo in the history of the league. On Tuesday afternoon, Steve Yzerman, Brett Hull, Luc Robitaille and Brian Leetch were announced as the newest members of hockey's most exclusive club.

New Jersey Devils general manager Lou Lamoriello was also elected as a builder.

Not really any surprises here, as they make up one of the best quintets to ever enter Toronto.

DETROIT – Sure, the flying octopi help. So do the throngs of rabid fans wearing jerseys ringed in the color of blood, and a no-nonsense building that doesn't require fancy bells and whistles in order to rock, and old-school rituals that get passed down like success.

As Red Wings coach Mike Babcock was saying Thursday, on the eve of one of the grandest, coolest spectacles in sports, this city is a part "of Canada that just got lost ... and these people love hockey, absolutely love hockey."

Former great Ted Lindsay, born on the cusp of the Great Depression, makes a point of stopping by for team meetings before each round, plopping down in his stall in the dressing room. Legends roam the halls, from Gordie Howe to Steve Yzerman. Players here retire, or maybe they get traded, or go elsewhere for a salary bump, but few ever really shed the thrill that comes with lacing it up for Hockeytown, USA.

There was a time when my favorite sport was, without hesitation, baseball. Recently, however, my interest in the game has been lost. Not because of a steroid scandal or the incompetence of Bud Selig, but mostly because the team I grew up cheering for, the Pittsburgh Pirates, has been a Major League Baseball team in name only and is currently working on its 17th consecutive losing season with no end in sight.

You might argue that makes me a fair-weather fan, but I disagree. My interest is so low that if, by some perfect storm -- like the rest of the National League halting operations and disbanding from the league -- the Pirates actually won something, I still probably wouldn't care as much as I should. I just don't care about baseball anymore, but I certainly don't begrudge those who still do. It's still a great game, even if my interest is at an all-time low.

If Detroit Red Wings center Pavel Datsyuk is going to claim his second straight Selke Trophy as the league's best defensive forward, he's going to have to overcome two excellent players in Philadelphia's Mike Richards and Vancouver's Ryan Kesler.

Regarded as one of the top defensive players in the game, Datsyuk finished second with 89 takeaways, trailing only Pittsburgh's Evgeni Malkin, who finished with 94. It's the first time in two years that Datsyuk has not led the league in that category, while he was also credited with 33 blocked shots and won over 56 percent of his faceoffs.

While most of the rest of the sports world is preoccupied with the trade of Brett Favre from Green Bay to New York and the possibilities that deal presents going forward, the hockey world has been spending most of this week looking backward at a trade that 20 years ago shook the foundations of the game -- the deal that sent the greatest player in the history of the game, Wayne Gretzky, from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings.

I'm having a tough time gathering up many thoughts that haven't been said and written here and elsewhere before. As it turns out, FanHouse had our own little spasm of Gretzky-mania in and around the 19th anniversary of the deal. I looked at the trade from the 50,000 foot-level; our old buddy Greg Wyshynski recounted the reaction of the media from August 9, 1988; and J.P. and Dr. Mirtle put Gretzky's greatness into perspective on the stat sheet. Earlier this week, Kevin Schultz shared the perspective of a hockey fan who got to watch the trade from his highchair.

Over at the NHL Network this week, it's been all Gretzky, all the time, beginning with Wednesday night when it premiered A Day That Changed The Game: August 9, 1988, an hour-long documentary about the deal. The rest of the week has been peppered with plenty of other Gretzky-centric programming, including replays of some of the most significant games from his time in a Kings uniform.

Even when I turned off the television, I couldn't get away from Gretzky. It was on Tuesday evening that I arrived home to find an express mail package on my doorstep from an old college buddy who lives outside New Orleans. Inside were a pair of Todd McFarlane figurines, both Gretzkys, one in an Oilers uniform and the other in his LA duds. Apparently, they still don't know who he is in rural Louisiana, so you can snag them for a buck a piece at the local dollar discount store.

After going without a captain all of last season, Hawks coach Denis Savard has decided to award a "C" to one of his bright young Turks: Jonathan Toews.

This star-in-the-making is one of the most mature young men in the NHL, and the Hawks didn't give a second thought to giving him an Alternate Captain's "A" last season. After just one year of apprenticeship, he's now been promoted.

"It's a natural fit," Savard said at rookie camp at the Edge in Bensenville. "Personally, when I sit down with the staff and my coaches, I know that I've got my mind made up. I don't care how young you are. He's that type of person that is going to be a great captain for us."

In the past, I haven't been too thrilled with teams putting extra pressure on young kids to be the captain of their franchise. For every Sidney Crosby who thrived under the pressure, there has been a Vincent Lecavalier or Chris Pronger that just couldn't handle the added responsibility.

In Toews' case, he's shown that he isn't your typical young punk, and has that calm, stoic demeanor more reminiscent of a young Steve Yzerman, although not nearly as scowly. He should do just fine.

Our esteemed leader asked me a simple question: "Between Pittsburgh and Detroit, who can rightly claim to be the 'Team of the 90's?'"

While blurting out "Detroit, dummy!" was my first instinct, I decided to look deeper into the question and come up with the best answer.

While Detroit has been a powerful team for the longest and Pittsburgh went through some very lean times (and near bankruptcy) before Sidney Crosby came to the rescue, let us not forget that the Pittsburgh Penguins were once scarier than the prospect of washing Lindsay Lohan's puke-drenched toilet.

Imagine a Power Play unit with Ron Francis, Paul Coffey, Jaromir Jagr, Mario Lemieux, and Larry Murphy? Yeah, I bet a lot of goaltenders were wearing adult diapers in the early 90s.

Let's do a little comparison shopping, shall we?

STANLEY CUPS: 2 apiece. The Penguins opened up the 90s with two consecutive cup wins, and then the Wings pulled off 2 straight cup wins of their own later in the decade.

OVERALL RECORD: Detroit wins this one by 27 wins.
Pittsburgh: 411-279-90-6
Detroit: 438-248-98-2

Hockey Night in Canada is doing a feature called BY THE NUMBERSHockey Night in Canada is doing a feature called BY THE NUMBERS, which attempts to rank the best players to ever wear a particular uniform number.

The latest number to be featured is #19, with Steve Yzerman edging Joe Sakic as the top player to don that popular number (just look at who is #3 and #4), according to the site. The comments under the post seem to lean heavily in favour of Yzerman over Sakic, which may have more to do with the Wings-heavy fan-base than anything else. Both players have been with one franchise their entire careers, play(ed) the game with a great deal of class, and represent everything one could want in a team leader.

So, which legend is really the top dog? Should Yzerman really rank #1 over Sakic?

JOE SAKIC:
Major Awards - 4 (Conn Smythe, Hart, Lady Byng)
Minor Awards - 2
Regular Season Scoring: 1340GP 615-992-1607
Playoff Scoring: 162GP 82-96-178
50-goal seasons: 2
100-point seasons: 6
Stanley Cups - 2

STEVE YZERMAN:
Major Awards - 3
Minor Awards - 1
Regular Season Scoring: 1514GP 692-1063-1755
Playoff Scoring: 196 70-115-185
50-goal seasons: 5
100-point seasons: 6
Stanley Cups - 3

While Yzerman has the greater career point totals, and the better defensive reputation, Sakic has more major awards, and a better points-per-game record in both the regular and post season.

One could say that Sakic should be 'penalized', since he wore #88 early in his career. Otherwise, this makes for an awesome debate, since it's clearly a tight race. Sakic is still going strong (18 points in 21 games this season), and could bypass Yzerman on the career scoring list within a few years.