Closing In

Steve Yzerman grabbed the puck and rushed down the left wing, carrying Washington Capitals center Esa Tikkanen on his back for the last 30 feet the same way he had carried the Detroit Red Wings for 15 seasons. Whether it's the weight of a franchise or 200 pounds of fractious Finn, Yzerman, the Detroit captain, never has been afraid of heavy lifting. When Yzerman and his chaperone fell in a heap and rammed into Capitals goalie Olaf Kolzig, the puck squirted free. Red Wings forward Tomas Holmstrom swooped in unattended and put the puck home, just 35 seconds into Game 3 of the Stanley Cup finals. That's Washington: first in war, first in peace, lousy in the first minute.

This wasn't hockey, it was a tantalizing game of keepaway. Every time overmatched Washington would get close, Detroit would merrily skip out of reach again. Sometimes the teams would emphasize defense, sometimes offense, but no matter which way the game flowed, the Red Wings would come out a goal better. If you had told the Capitals before the series that through three games they would have held Detroit without a power-play goal, limited the duo of center Sergei Fedorov and wing Brendan Shanahan to one goal, had some production from forwards Peter Bondra and Adam Oates and received superior goaltending from Kolzig than Detroit had had from Chris Osgood, they probably would have liked their chances of winning their first Stanley Cup. Instead, Detroit led the best-of-seven tease 3-0 and had a chance to wrap up its second straight Cup on Tuesday.

The reflected glow from the Cup is soft and flattering, and Yzerman, nicked and dented but still with a striking, boyish face, has never looked better. Last year's championship illuminated the one facet of Yzerman's game that 563 career goals and six straight 100-point seasons never could. "Funny how it works," he says. "I'm not a huge scorer anymore"—his 155 points in 1988-89 are the most in an NHL season by anyone not named Gretzky or Lemieux—"but over the past couple of years I've become the player that I should have been all along. More of a defensive player than an offensive player."

This conceit is as remarkable as the Beatles' announcing they mildly regret having done all that gold-record I Wanna Hold Your Hand stuff rather than heading straight to Sgt. Pepper, but defense has been the foundation of Yzerman's game since 1994-95. Before that season Detroit coach Scotty Bowman talked to Yzerman about the evolution of Montreal Canadiens star Jacques Lemaire in the '70s and Pittsburgh Penguins standout Ron Francis in the early '90s, offensive centers who, because of the wealth of firepower on their formidable teams, tailored their games to a more defensive style. The one-way Red Wings, Bowman said, had to change. With Fedorov's emergence as a scorer and with the acquisition of center Igor Larionov, a strong, sage locker room voice to complement Yzerman's, Detroit no longer needed its captain to fill the net. "Actually players like getting to lay off the numbers," Bowman says now. "You score 50 one year, you're expected to get 50 the next, and players enjoy not having to get all the goals. They enjoy winning more."

Recently, Yzerman said his 24 goals in the 1997-98 regular season represented "a career year." Everyone took notes and nodded, missing the intended irony.

His play in the postseason has been less subtle. In fact, it has been so direct and unmistakable that even old India hands at the CIA could have detected the explosion as long ago as February, when Yzerman played in the Olympics. The experience in Nagano might have been a drag on the NHL, but it rejuvenated Yzerman. He fed off the energy of his Team Canada roommates—Wayne Gretzky, Martin Brodeur and Rod Brind'Amour—and gamboled in the high-tempo games. "I'm not any quicker goal line to goal line," Yzerman says, "but I've been concentrating on moving my feet. It's just a matter of doing it, getting the puck and going. You get into a tendency of getting the puck and looking around. You should just take off and worry about doing something with the puck later."

Against Washington, Yzerman took off again. He set up the winning goal in Detroit's 2-1 Game 1 victory, scored twice (once shorthanded) in the 5-4 overtime win in Game 2, and created the goal that took the Capitals and the home crowd out of the match early in Game 3. He played 70 minutes, high among Red Wings forwards, in the first three games while winning 66% of his face-offs. In an era that supposedly belongs to big, young forwards like Eric Lindros, Jaromir Jagr and Peter Forsberg, easily the best player in this postseason has been a 5"11", 185-pounder who is not conspicuously strong, stopwatch fast or, at 33, young. "He's that rare athlete who can lift his team," Capitals left wing Brian Bellows says of Yzerman. "He defines the personality of his team. Their 'no quit' comes from him."

Yzerman simply will not lie down, although he can be pancaked to the ice in the prone position, as Capitals menace Dale Hunter did in Game 1. Hunter knocked Yzerman down in the Washington crease, used him as a Barcalounger for a few seconds and pressed his face into the ice before raking his glove across Yzerman's kisser in what hockey players call a face wash. When asked the next day if he found the tactic offensive, Yzerman replied, "That depends on whether it's a new glove or an old glove. Old gloves tend to stink."

"You'll notice everyone was getting excited about what Hunter did to Stevie," Red Wings associate coach Dave Lewis said. "Except Stevie."

They had to get excited about something. Game I was one of those January-in-June matches, as intense as a zephyr. While playoff series often begin slowly, there hadn't been this much of a feeling-out process since prom night. "We got a lead," Fedorov said, "and then we stood out there chewing gum or something." The Red Wings cruised to an early 2-0 advantage, then hung on in the final 10 minutes. If the fans wanted a glut of goals, it seemed, they'd have to wait for the World Cup.