At 61, Dominik Hasek has cooled the on-ice passion that drove him to two hart trophies and six Vezinas. Off the ice? That’s a very different matter. His relentless opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has upset some and even led to not-so-subtle death.
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Hart to Heart - March 20, 2026 - Vol. 79, Iss. 09 – Ken Campbell
THE HANDS THAT ONCE wore gloves where goals went to die are now showing age spots. The architect of the greatest achievement in Czech hockey history sits in a cafe in a crowded downtown mall in Prague more than 27 years after the fact and gladly engages with fans and poses for selfies. He smiles and laughs easily and is undoubtedly more chill than when he was the greatest goalie the game has ever seen. (Lots of people think so. And they’re right.) That’s owing to the fact that he hasn’t played a competitive game in net in more than 14 years, but it’s more so because he’s smack dab in the middle of a second go-round at fatherhood. He and his partner, Lenka, share a three-year-old son and a 10-month-old daughter. Between dropping his son off at kindergarten every day, driving to the country house in nearby Benesov to give his dogs some exercise and his almost daily tweets about the concerning state of the world, Dominik Hasek is running himself a little ragged. But he’s happy.
Having two grown children who are well into forging their own paths in life and another two taking the first steps on theirs is challenging, even for someone as acrobatic as Hasek. As he sips his espresso, he doesn’t sound or look much different than the rail-thin goalie who played the game in a way that nobody had before or has since, but he admits he’s a different man at 61 than the one who was tightly wound in his younger days – only to spring out in every direction once he put his goaltending equipment on. And young Honza Hasek and Tereza Hasekova have a lot to do with that. Mushroom picking is enormously popular in Czechia, and Hasek spends his days now with Lenka and the kids, venturing out into the country to pick mushrooms. Dominik Hasek picks mushrooms. “I’m maybe a little calmer now,” he said on a busy Monday morning in October. “This is the difference, you know? I’m calmer. I don’t want to say I was yelling at the kids when I was playing hockey, but I’m a little calmer with the upbringing now.”
I’M NOT ONLY A HOCKEY PLAYER. I’M A PERSON, A CITIZEN OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC– DOMINIK HASEK
But here’s the most interesting pivot (although it probably shouldn’t be because inside every goalie is a guy who thinks he’s awesome playing out): Hasek is a defenseman – a defensive one, of course. He plays for a beer-league team called Sevci, or the Shoemakers, because the area of Prague where he has lived for the past decade is historically known for its prowess at manufacturing footwear. Most of the guys on the team are pushing 50, and Hasek notices the 10-year age gap, but he still gets excited about the prospect of hitting the ice every weekend. Lenka was none too thrilled when he had a game the same day as Honza’s third birthday party, but Hasek’s game was at noon, and the party didn’t start until three, so he figured he had plenty of time. Plus, it was a really big one. “We were playing against the city 10 miles from us, and it’s a big rivalry because we lost to them in the playoffs last year,” he said. “We were missing our three top forwards, our top line, and we are thinking, ‘We cannot win.’ Six seconds into the game, we are losing 1-0, and we are losing 2-0 in the third period. Anyway, we won 6-4, and they were so upset at the end of the game, taking a bunch of penalties. It’s a beer-league game, but it is one of the best games of my life. We were so happy after that game.”
There is one thing that unites all of the great ones in any sport, something that goes far beyond natural talent and physical gifts and the ability to exploit them. It transcends the advantages many elite athletes have in terms of financial resources, family support and exposure to competition. That trait is passion, and Hasek has always had it. Passion drove him to the heights of his craft in Czechia, and at 25, he brought it with him to North America, seven years after being drafted by the Chicago Blackhawks in the 10th round. Unable to speak even rudimentary English and with no fanfare when he arrived, Hasek rode his passion to become a six-time Vezina Trophy and two-time Hart Trophy winner. It drove him to never give up on any shot, even in practice, and made him a near-impenetrable shield that gave up just six goals in the 1998 Olympics – the first Games to feature NHL players – limiting powerhouse Canada to one in the semifinal and shutting Russia out in the gold medal game. It also drove him to clash with coaches, reporters and teammates. In 2003, while still playing in the NHL, Hasek escaped possible jail time after an altercation with another player during a summer inline-hockey game in his hometown of Pardubice.
As Hasek enters his seventh decade, passion drives him to still be as excited about winning a beer-league game on the Saturday afternoon of his kid’s birthday party as he was about winning a gold medal or a Stanley Cup. And in recent years, it has driven him to become the most outspoken athlete, or former athlete, since perhaps Muhammad Ali. Hasek will not go quietly into the night. He will not stay in his lane. Whether it’s a threat to democracy in his own country or the invasion of another, he simply will not shut up. It has made him something of a pariah in the hockey community and has put him at odds with the NHL. “ ‘Stick to hockey.’ I hear that all the time,” Hasek said. “But I’m not only a hockey player. I’m a person, a citizen of the Czech Republic.”
It also put him in the metaphorical crosshairs of at least one very powerful person, former Russian president and prime minister and current deputy head of Russia’s security council Dmitry Medvedev. Hasek doesn’t mince words when it comes to Russia’s invasion of and war with Ukraine. In his many dispatches in both Czech and English on X, Hasek has repeatedly labelled both Russian president Vladimir Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump as “criminals” and “traitors” and has called current Czech prime minister Andrej Babis, a billionaire right-wing populist and former Communist Party member, “a coward” and accused him of “helping terrorist Russia to achieve its imperialist goals.” Since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, it has been a relentless and uninhibited barrage from Hasek, one that Medvedev responded to by saying Hasek suffers from “Russiaphobia” and that he should be careful crossing the street and to “not drink beer in unverified places.”
I BELIEVE THAT WHAT THE NHL AND THE UNITED STATES ARE DOING RIGHT NOW ARE NOT THE RIGHT THINGS, AND I MUST SAY THAT– DOMINIK HASEK
“It was just like the mob, like a mafia guy,” Hasek said. “But I always say when people support the biggest criminal of the current war, Putin, and they are criticizing me, it means I am doing the right things. It encourages me to continue doing it because 99 percent of the people who are criticizing me are people who support a criminal.”
Hasek took the threats seriously and received an offer of security from the Czech government, but he’s clearly not worried. He’s also undeterred in his criticisms. He has spoken in the past of running for president of the Czech Republic, a race he probably would have won in a landslide after the Nagano Games in 1998. And in 2024, he ran in the senate race in the Benesov region, finishing third among six candidates, with just over 20 percent of the vote.
When it comes to the NHL, Hasek is just as critical of the league where he gained his fame, won his Stanley Cups and earned more than $60 million. He has used his status and platform to consistently take the NHL to task for allowing Russians to compete in the world’s best, most high-profile league, which he claims should bar any Russian player who does not publicly condemn the Russian war in Ukraine. In previous years, when the NHL opened its regular season at the O2 Arena in Prague as part of its Global Series, Hasek was always a willing and eager participant in the festivities. When the league kicked off its 2024-25 season in Prague, Hasek spoke out against the games and refused to participate. He insists he has nothing against Russian players personally, having played with many of them over the course of his NHL career and in the KHL in 2010-11, the final season of his career. But he even more vociferously insists that every time Alex Ovechkin got a goal closer to Wayne Gretzky’s all-time record, he provided the Russians with millions of dollars in advertising for their war effort. It’s not as though Ovechkin yelled, “Hail, Putin!” each time he put one into the back of the net. It’s more nuanced than that. A big part of advertising is simply being in people’s consciousness, and Hasek believes Ovechkin, who in the past has expressed his support with his inclusion on ‘Team Putin,’ provides that to Russia every time he steps on the ice. And it’s not only Ovechkin. Hasek believes it also applies to Nikita Kucherov and Kirill Kaprizov and Evgeni Malkin and Sergei Bobrovsky and the 60 other Russian-born players who had appeared in an NHL uniform through the first half of 2025-26. (There are an additional seven players from Belarus, a country that aided the Russian invasion by providing a clear path to Kyiv and, like Russia, has been banned from competing by the IIHF.)
Hasek compares Russia to Coca-Cola. Coke helps maintain its lofty status by staying in the collective consciousness through advertising. Hasek reasons that if Coke were no longer allowed to advertise its product, its presence would decrease, and sales would eventually be affected. He said the same applies to Russia when it showcases its athletes, singers and artists to the rest of the world. Hasek said he was involved in talks with Czech officials to impose an edict barring Russian athletes from competing in the country unless they denounced the war, and he said the initiative gained significant traction before dying. “Unfortunately, I can’t make people understand that this advertisement is like sending the Russians tanks and planes,” he said. “It’s the same thing. If Ovechkin scores a goal and the NHL lets him do it, it’s a great advertisement for the Russian war. They’ve been given billions, maybe trillions, in free advertising. If you take away that advertising, maybe support for Russia goes down. It won’t go down in two weeks or maybe in two months, but it will go down. If you stop the advertising, their product will be more difficult to sell. When a Russian player makes an appearance in the United States or anywhere else in the world, he advertises Russian sins. And right now, Russian sins are the war against Ukraine.”
Prior to playing in the NHL, Hasek earned a degree in history and education at the University of Hradec Kralove and had a stint as a high-school history teacher. So he has some perspective here. He also spent the first 24 years of his life under a Communist regime that was controlled at arm’s length by the former Soviet Union and was carried out by complicit Czech Communists. Surprisingly, though, he claims he’s not on some kind of crusade against his country’s former occupiers. He also doesn’t feel any remorse about being so outspoken against Putin and the Russians. What about his opposition to the NHL and the United States? Well, that causes him a little more consternation, considering both were instrumental in giving him all the luxuries he now enjoys. “The United States and the NHL, and even Canada, where I spent a bit of time in my career, they are in my heart,” Hasek said. “I’m doing this because it’s in my heart. I cannot support the NHL. I cannot support the United States. But I got so much from the United States and the NHL, and it’s in my heart. I want what’s best for the NHL, and I want what’s best for the American people, but I believe that what the NHL and the United States are doing right now are not the right things, and I must say that. The USA used to be, for me and the rest of the world, the country that we looked to and admired. They were our leader, and they were powerful. But they are going to a dictatorship. I don’t want to say it’s the end of democracy, but it could be.”
I DON’T WANT TO SAY IT’S THE END OF DEMOCRACY, BUT IT COULD BE– DOMINIK HASEK
It kind of gives you the impression that the mellowing of Hasek is restricted to the ice surface. Hasek maintains that he has played beer-league hockey for 10 years since moving to Prague and has never been in a fight. He knows his limitations, and he plays the game calmly, using his experience and hockey sense to thwart players decades younger than he is. As far as playing style is concerned, Hasek was as unconventional and fearless on the ice as he now is off it. Between conveniently losing the grip on his stick during in-tight scrums in his crease and his painful-looking contortions, Hasek was the kind of goalie the league had never seen before and probably never will again. Of course, no other goalie has ever been named the most valuable player in the league by both members of the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association and the NHL Players’ Association twice, either. Nor has any goalie ever played more than 60 games in a season and thrown up a .937 save percentage. When Hasek would undergo fitness testing during training camp, it wouldn’t be surprising to see him finish last in bench press and first in CO2 capacity. His pokechecks, two-pad slides and movement in the crease made him one of the only goalies in NHL history who was part of the entertainment experience.
Hasek looks at the technique- and trend-obsessed goalies of the current NHL and has a pretty healthy perspective on the matter. He could never have played a robotic style based on analytics and spreadsheets, of course. A unique composition of his knees probably made him the best butterfly goalie who has ever lived, but it was done to stop the puck, not to take away the bottom of the net based on scoring probabilities and expected goals. He doesn’t love today’s methods, but he’s also not one of these former great athletes who mistakenly thinks things were actually better way back then. “It’s a little bit boring, but the way they do it is the best way to stop the puck, no question,” Hasek said. “My generation was better than the goalies of the 1970s, and they are better than we were. But for me, it’s boring. I remember when I was back in Detroit in 2008. The puck was in the corner, and Chris Osgood was on one knee, and I said, ‘This is not normal.’ If I did that in the 1980s, the coach would yell at me from the bench that I am f---ing up. But everybody is doing it now because it’s the best way to do it.”
IT’S A LITTLE BIT BORING, BUT THE WAY THEY DO IT IS THE BEST WAY TO STOP THE PUCK, NO QUESTION– DOMINIK HASEK ON TODAY’S GOALIES
As far as his place in history is concerned, Hasek isn’t about to get involved in that debate. There is definitely a case for him to be considered the greatest of all-time, given the fact that he is the only goalie in NHL history to win multiple Hart Trophies. At the very least, he’s in the conversation with the likes of Jacques Plante, Terry Sawchuk, Patrick Roy, Martin Brodeur and Ken Dryden. Hasek has always put Ed Belfour high on his list, but the reality is that Belfour is probably not in the top 10. Hasek has also always admired Brodeur, who seemed to be everything he was not. He marvelled at Brodeur’s ability to play the puck, something that was completely foreign to Hasek when he first came to North America. “My hands were not strong, so I was at a disadvantage,” he said. “I became so-so. Once I got to know how to do it, I loved doing it. I loved being active.”
As Hasek puts the finishing touches on his second espresso, the conversation has passed the one-hour mark, and he seems in no big hurry to get going. A customer at the cafe notices things have wound down and approaches him for a photo. The two chat in Czech, and he makes the fellow feel welcome. So, yes, ‘The Dominator’ has mellowed. But he mentions several times how upset he is about what is happening in Ukraine. He’s a big believer in how your behavior reflects on your home country, and if the Czechs were doing what the Russians are engaged in, he would denounce his own people. “I get emotional about it,” he said. “We don’t kill people, and we don’t grab the territory of other states, and that’s the difference. We try to get it right. Sometimes we don’t, but we try.”
As he gets up to leave, Hasek is approached again. He’s equally cordial, then he grabs his jacket and heads off. He certainly doesn’t look concerned about the prospect of crossing a busy street in downtown Prague and doesn’t think about how his views might impact his life. “I’m not hiding,” he said. “I go everywhere.”
