Steve Yzerman

“I'm never gonna play again, and I know I'm really, really going to miss it.”

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

“I'm exhausted trying to stay healthy.”

“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 don't know if I've ever had a memorable body check. It's not really part of my game.”

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

“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.”

“Darren McCarty is a big video game guy, and he brings his systems with him on the road.”

“I knew if I wanted to be a general manager, I was going to have to leave to work for another organization.”

“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.”

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

“Since the season ended, I've let things settle down, and I have to talk to the coaching staff and management. I really don't want to turn this into a big drama. So I plan on making a definite decision relatively quickly.”

“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.”

“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.”