On May 9th 1965 a leader was born, and that leader was Steve Yzerman. Yzerman was born in Cranbrook, British Columbia. He began skating when he was a mere 3 years old, but was still a little too young to play organized hockey with his older brother Mike, who was two years older. At age 5 Yzerman started playing organized ice hockey, but really couldn’t skate all that well. In fact, his first gino (goal) was scored because he had slipped up in front of the adversaries net and an opposing defenseman bounced the puck off a teammate. Since Yzerman was the closest to the puck, he was given credit for the goal. This was certainly not a foundation suitable for a legendary career.
As a young boy Yzerman played many different sports, but by age ten he gave up the other sports to concentrate on hockey. He spent almost all his time on hockey and made it clear to people around him that this was his one true passion. He progressed quickly and by the time young Steve was 14 years old he was playing tier two juniors with the Nepean Raiders in the Central Junior Hockey League (CJHL). He never really put up outstanding amounts of points but he brought other things to the game that made it clear he was a high caliber player as is shown with the following quote. (The Captain).
Yzermans NHL career started off hot with him being chosen 4th overall by the Detroit Red Wings in the 1983 draft. He came to the red wings as a last hope to get there franchise turned around and get