NHL: The Captain heads to the Hall

The gusting winds of mid-autumn blew in British Columbia as Ron Yzerman packed two sons and their hockey gear into the car and drove to a rink in Cranbrook.

The league that interested the father, in 1970, was for 6-year-olds. His older boy, Michael, turned 6 his previous birthday. The younger, Stevie, was only 5. But his dad was determined he would play.

So was Stevie.

"Back then, you really didn't have much of a league until you were 6, and my dad put me down for a year older than I was," Steve Yzerman recalled. "So, I played."

It was far from the last time he would be the youngest player on the ice, or one of the smallest.

"I was terrible," Yzerman said, bemused by the memory. "I couldn't skate. I just sort of knocked around, and walked around, or laid on the ice the whole game."

That would change.

Within a decade, fans in Ontario talked about his certain future, an NHL career. And even early into his tasks of resurrecting The Dead Things and transforming Detroit into Hockeytown, they talked about his place in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Today, the inevitable occurs: Steve Yzerman will be inducted into the Hall of Fame in Toronto.

Along the way, the influence of family, determination, courage and abiding humility shaped the man, the player, the champion and the legend.

"All I wanted, my whole life, was to be a hockey player," Yzerman said. "One of the ultimate and final honors of your career is to go into the Hall of Fame. I'm not going to play again, so this is the last opportunity I have as a player."

'Ahead of his age'

On the road to the pantheon, among Yzerman's early opportunities was playing with the Nepean Raiders of the Central Junior A Hockey League.

At 15, Yzerman was still smaller than most boys his age, few of whom played with the older teenagers in Junior A.

"He was always a year or two ahead of his age," said Darren Pang, the former NHL goaltender who played with Yzerman for the Raiders. "But he was very even-keeled, extraordinarily mature and a very quiet leader.

"He blocked shots, won face-offs and, when the game was on the line, he was the best player on the ice."

Like others who have known, Pang attributes Yzerman's celebrated character and the development of his talent to his parents.

"His mother, Jean, is as powerful a woman as you can find," Pang said. "She does so much for that family and does it in a quiet, discreet way. And Ron? I hung out there at the house, a little bit. I didn't want to get into any trouble around Ron. He had that look about him. He was pretty firm."