9501220363
DETROIT FREE PRESS
950613
Tuesday, June 13, 1995
METRO FINAL
1C
MITCH ALBOM
Copyright (c) 1995, Detroit Free Press
A FEW GOOD MEN WEARIED OF WAIT
It's a long walk to the Red Wings locker room at the farthest end of the
arena tunnel, past the storage areas and the electrical wires, and past the
benches where the players' wives sit and wait for their husbands.
I have been making this walk for 10 years, and for most of that time, I
have been saying hello to Lisa Yzerman, a slim, dark-haired woman who, when I
first met her, was Steve's girlfriend, and then his fiancee, and then his
wife, and is now the mother of their year-old daughter. We grew up together a
little in that hallway, especially since, every spring, the last time I would
see her would be after a season-ending Detroit loss.
"I'm sorry," I would mumble, something useless like that, and she would
always nod or smile. They say good things come to those who wait, but year
after year, she was sitting there, waiting for the good things.
On Sunday night, an hour after the game, her husband sat inside the locker
room in a happy daze, still wearing his sweat-soaked red undershirt and
pushing his wet hair from his forehead as he said, "We're finally going. . .
. I can't believe we're finally going. . . ."
The nicest moment of Detroit's heart-thumping 2-1 double- overtime win
Sunday was not the last goal, or the flying octopi, or even Bruce Martyn
yelling, "He scoooo-res!"
The nicest moment was when Yzerman hugged Shawn Burr, his longtime
teammate, then lifted that Campbell bowl and shook it over his head and
heard the applause rain down like confetti.
"I didn't know what you do with the trophy," Yzerman admitted. "Do you take
a lap with it or what? I was a little embarrassed. Finally I looked at (Paul)
Coffey and he said, 'Let's get outta here.'
"I've never had a moment like that. I never heard it that loud. It was so
loud. . . ."
Those who wait.
Yzerman, Burr waited longest
Sweat dripped off Yzerman's chin. A bandage was on his right knee, on
which he had surgery two weeks ago. At one point during Sunday's game, he was
knocked down, got up, skated gingerly to the bench, and went straight into the
locker room. Fans thought he was done, injured, finished. But he came back 10
minutes later and was on the ice -- and next thing you knew, he scored the
tying goal.
"A minor problem," Yzerman said afterward, waving it off. Of course, a
minor problem for Yzerman is brain surgery to everyone else. If anyone thinks
this guy is not the fiercest inspiration inside the Detroit locker room,
think again. Players respond more to courage than to statistics, and they have
seen a wounded Yzerman make more comebacks than a dog's bone. It is the
reason he, and not Sergei Fedorov, is the leader of this team.
"When Stevie grabbed me at center ice, he said something like, 'Burrsy, all
those years of nothing and now this!' " It was Burr talking. He, like
Yzerman, has been waiting for this moment his whole Detroit career. This is
another guy I've been seeing spring after lousy spring, with his face red hot
with emotion, tears often dripping from his eyes.
Over the years, I watched Burr go from locker room baby to finally being
able to grow a playoff goatee. I remember when he was dating his girlfriend,
Amanda, and when he married her, and when they had their first baby, because
I wrote, "Wait a minute, how can a kid have a kid?"
And here he was, Sunday night, a veteran now, throwing himself into a pile
of joyous players on the ice. "There were two groups celebrating, so I skated
from one to the next and back again. I skated more doing that than I did on a
couple of shifts."
He laughed heartily. His swollen right eyelid was the color of motor oil.
No big deal, he said. Winning was the thing.
"When Steve and I were hugging, you could feel the emotion flowing from me
to him and him to me. All the stuff we've been through. It was like . . .
finally!"
Those who wait.
One more war to win
Across the room, watching all this, dressed in a tailored white shirt and
tie, was Coffey. In his own way, he has been waiting, too. Not for his first
championship, but perhaps, you never know, for his last.
Coffey has four Stanley Cup rings, the most recent one four years ago with
Pittsburgh. He is 34 now. This means his dream is not about "the first time"
but about "one more time." He hungers for it like a wolf.
"Tonight," he said of Game 5, "was about experience. You don't get
experience from being in the league 10 or 12 years. You get experience from
going through wars."
This was a war, all right, this Chicago series, and now there is one war to
go, the finals. Coffey, who has become a hockey Yoda to this team, kept
saying, "We haven't done anything yet," but even he could pause, if just for a
moment, to salute what guys like Burr and Yzerman have endured.
"I'll never forget," Coffey said, "two years ago, when we were eliminated
by Toronto, I looked over at Steve and saw tears in his eyes. And he said, 'I
didn't get the job done. . . . It's the same damn thing. . . . I didn't get
the job done.' "
Coffey shook his head. "It's been a long time since I've heard someone
blame himself like that -- and not blame everyone else. That man deserves
this."
They all do. When I came out of the locker room Sunday night, I folded my
notebook, zipped my bag, and who was there but Lisa Yzerman. And finally, I
was able to say this: "Congratulations." She smiled, said thanks, and
eventually her husband came out and they drove home together. It was a good
thing, which is all they had been waiting for.
COLUMN; PLAYER; DREDWINGS; STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFS; DELAY; WAIT;Red Wings