Dominik Hasek enjoyed an astonishing professional hockey career. In this story from THN's Archive, we broke down his phenomenal achievements in net for the Buffalo Sabres and at the Olympics.
A little more than 25 years ago, the Buffalo Sabres were rounding into the best form in franchise history – and in this cover story from The Hockey News’ March 13, 1998 edition – Vol. 51, Issue 26 – writer Mark Brender visited Buffalo to profile Sabres superstar goaltender Dominik Hasek.
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At the time of the article, Hasek was 33 years old – ancient, by modern standards – but he would have incredible success in his thirties, including two consecutive Hart Memorial Trophies as the NHL’s most valuable player, two Stanley Cup championships with the Detroit Red Wings and an Olympic gold medal for his Czech homeland. But in Brender’s story, it was clear he was already an icon on many levels.
“He’s the biggest athlete in the country, ever,” fellow Czech Republic star Richard Smehlik told Brender. “He’s like God over there. You could see the signs when we arrived in Prague (after the Olympic win) – ‘Hasek For President.’ “
Hasek wasn’t the most positionally sound netminder of his era, but his instincts were astonishing, and his athleticism always gave him a chance to stop whatever scoring chance he was facing.
“His legs are so fast that you cannot beat him,” Sabres teammate Donald Audette said in the article. “He has got quickness that’s unbelievable.”
Hasek carried the Sabres to the win column more often than not in his nine seasons in Buffalo, and he impressed players from his own era and from eras before him.
“I think the biggest difference between (Hasek and icons Terry) Sawchuk, (Jacques) Plante and (Glenn) Hall is that Hasek hasn’t played for hockey teams like these guys did,” said former New York Rangers and Hockey Hall of Fame defenseman Harry Howell, who was scouting for Edmonton at the time Brender spoke to him. “(Hasek) has got the reflexes I don’t think anybody has ever had.”
Eventually, Hasek moved on from the Sabres in a cost-cutting trade to Detroit. It seems ridiculous in hindsight that Buffalo would want to part ways with arguably the best player in franchise history, but Hasek learned early on how to turn the lemons life handed him into lemonade on the ice.
“I always said to myself if something bad is going on, maybe it turns to something good,” Hasek told Brender. “Anything (in my career) is possible, but I don’t want to make any promises. I didn’t make any promises before the Olympics and I won the gold medal. I’d like to do the same thing in Buffalo.”
That didn’t happen, but before he won Cups, he’d already done enough to secure himself a spot in the Hall of Fame (and he was welcomed into the HHOF in 2014).
“Winning a Cup does enhance (Hasek’s) chances (at the Hall of Fame),” former Sabres GM and coach John Muckler said. “But I think by the time he’s finished playing, probably he won’t need that Cup to get there.”
A STREAK FOR THE AGES
Vol. 51, No. 26, March 13, 1998
By Mark Brender
BUFFALO – Buffalo Sabres’ coach Lindy Ruff has a policy of not naming his starting goaltender until game time. Someone forgot to tell him there’d be more suspense waiting for the Tampa Bay Lightning to put on a guaranteed-win night. But on the occasion of Dominik Hasek’s triumphant return from Nagano, Japan - via Tokyo, Prague, Amsterdam and Detroit - Ruff throws caution to the wind.
“If he’s ready to play, he’ll play,” Ruff declared, a day before the Sabres take on the Toronto Maple Leafs Feb. 25 in their first game after the Olympic break. “I’m no fool.”
Ready to play? Hasek didn’t even arrive in the country for another five hours. He landed in Detroit that night after a seven-hour flight, on which he got his first hours of shut-eye in three days of travel and celebration, to an impromptu news conference. The memory of an estimated 150,000 person mob in Prague’s central square a day earlier - the largest crowd since the 1989 Czech revolution over the communists - was fresh in his mind. President Vaclav Havel sent his personal jet to Japan to pick up the Czech gold-medalists, 1-0 winners in the final over Russia behind a Hasek shutout.
“He’s the biggest athlete in the country, ever,” said compatriot and Sabres’ teammate Richard Smehlik. “He’s like God over there. You could see the signs when we arrived in Prague, ‘Hasek for President.’”
Right, Detroit. Then it was back on another plane to Buffalo where there were hundreds more fans and television crews rolling live hits. When Hasek got home, the neighbors were waiting there too, kids playing, middle-aged adults clapping, Czech flags in their windows. Hasek was overcome and donned his Czech sweater and gold medal right on the spot. After a couple hours sleep he woke up at 4:30 a.m.
When the sun came up there was another news conference after the morning skate; the proclamation reading “Sabres’ Olympian Day in Western New York.” Seven hours later. Hasek proved his coach is no fool, indeed; he is the game’s first star and at his acrobatic best in stopping 33 of 35 shots, many of them point-blank rebounds behind a porous Sabres’ defense, in a 2-2 tie with Toronto. After backup Steve Shields took over in a 1-1 tie with the Boston Bruins Feb. 26, the Sabres were on an 11-game unbeaten streak.
And so the legend grows. Hasek’s torso is a rake made of rubber, his legs all sinew, no bone. He swims, sprawls, drops his stick and snatches up pucks with his blocker hand like he’s on an Easter egg hunt. If he sees it, he stops it. He can even do it jetlagged.
Toronto defenseman Mathieu Schneider admits NHL shooters get psyched out facing him. “When you’re on a breakaway or have a clear shot, guys think they need a perfect shot to beat him.”
In the Olympics, Hasek stopped 38 of 39 shots to knock out Team USA, then shut down five of Canada’s best in a sudden-death shootout to send them packing. Hasek was also 6-for-6 in the all-star skills competition breakaway relay in January. Add ’em all up and the total is 10 players stymied (he stopped Theo Fleury twice), whom by the Olympic break had combined for. oh, 3,377 regular season NHL goals.
The truth? Team Canada could have added Henri and ‘Rocket’ Richard, Mario Lemieux and Pepe LePieux. Joe Malone, Moses Malone, Howe, Lindsay, Cain and Abel, and all of them put together would only have tied Czech scorer Robert Reichel. Maybe.
“His legs are so fast that you cannot beat him,” said teammate Donald Audette. “He has got quickness that’s unbelievable.”
The legend of ‘The Dominator’ has been building for the better part of this decade. Over the past five years, who has been better? Certainly no one among his peers. Perhaps no one in history.
Since the start of the NHL’s modern era in 1943-44, there have been six other goalies to post remarkable five-year runs, based on loose criteria of all-star selections, regular season and playoff success: Montreal Canadiens’ goalies Bill Durnan, Jacques Plante, Ken Dryden and Patrick Roy (currently of the Colorado Avalanche) along with former Detroit Red Wing Terry Sawchuk and Chicago Black Hawk Glenn Hall.
That Hasek belongs in their company is indisputable. He led the league in save percentage the past four seasons: .930, .920, .930, .930. No one else on record has ever done that. (Hasek, with a 2.33 goals-against average and .925 SP, was neck-and neck with New Jersey Devils’ goalie Martin Brodeur to win his fifth SP title. The difference between them was some 400 additional shots faced by Hasek - an average of seven per game.) Last season Hasek won the Hart Trophy as league MVP. No goalie had done that for 35 years.
This season, add on a record six shutouts in one month (December) and a stunning turnaround from early struggles when he was consistently booed at home for his remarks last summer that some believe cost popular coach Ted Nolan his job.
“I always said to myself if something bad is going on, maybe it turns to something good,” Hasek said. To suggest the next step could be Stanley Cup-good is no more ridiculous than it would have been to predict a Czech Republic Olympic triumph in Nagano.
“Anything is possible, but I don’t want to make any promises. I didn’t make any promises before the Olympics and I won the gold medal. I’d like to do the same thing in Buffalo.”
Former Sabres’ GM and current New York Rangers’ coach John Muckler used to call Hasek the best player developer the organization ever had. He allowed a young team to gain experience and make mistakes without sinking under the weight of 50-loss seasons. Even last season, when the Sabres finished sixth overall, they gave up 638 more shots than they took. By comparison, fifth place Detroit took 651 more than it yielded. That 1,289-shot difference translated into just two points in the standings. That’s Hasek.
Current GM Darcy Regier speaks of a new era dawning.
“The obligation we have both to Dominik and to the organization is to use this time to build a stronger structure,” Regier said. “One of the things that the players haven’t stated, but has been sort of feeling around the team, is that if Dominik Hasek can do what he did for the Czech Republic with team of only 11 NHLers, what might be possible here? It has opened up possibilities.”
A Cup is the only thing those other goalie legends have that Hasek doesn’t. Plante won five Cups in the five-year period, Dryden four, Sawchuk three, Durnan two and Hall and Roy one each. Hasek has never played past the first round (although his Sabres have). He’d like to forget last spring altogether - the one in which he injured his knee three games into series with the Ottawa Senators, attacked columnist Jim Kelley, and then watched from the stands as the Sabres fell in five games to the Philadelphia Flyers.
But expansion and parity mean no team will win five Cups in a row for a long time. In the days of the Original Six, the four teams that qualified for the post-season had a 25 per cent chance of winning it all before they’d played a game. Hasek has never even played for a team that could be considered among the top eight favorites. He has never had Dryden’s Big Three on defense, Sawchuk’s Production Line, Plante’s cast of dozens.
“I think the biggest difference between (Hasek and) Sawchuk, Plante and Hall is that Hasek hasn’t played for hockey teams like these guys did. He has seen a lot more action than they ever did,” said Edmonton Oilers’ scout and former New York Rangers’ Hall of Fame defenseman Harry Howell, who played against all three over a 21-year career. “(Hasek) has got the reflexes I don’t think anybody has ever had. We were never really psyched out by the goalie. We had so much to worry about with these other players. You just hoped you got close enough to the goaltender to get a shot. Jacques Plante, where would he have been if he started with the Boston Bruins or New York Rangers in the 1950s?”
There’s also the matter of Hasek’s combustible temperament. Hasek wasn’t on The Hockey News’ list of franchise players prior to this season because of questions raised by his blow-up last spring. Sometimes, though, he uses his emotion for positive effect, such as when he smashed his stick on the goalpost after being left out to dry twice in a row in a game against Montreal just before the break. Ruff said Hasek wanted to make a statement.
“His statement was, ‘We’ve got a 3-1 lead on the power play and we’re giving up breakaways and 2-on-ls?’ That was pretty much was the coaching staff was thinking too. It saved wear and tear on my voice.”
Of course, Hasek knows a thing or two about wear and tear himself. He’s 33 now-a five-time Czech League player of the year in the 1980s before he even came to the NHL. Hasek still hopes to play in the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. By that point, he should have enough brilliance behind him to cement his place among the legends, even if the Sabres haven’t reached the Stanley Cup promised land.
One more thing about those other six goalies: five are already in the Hall of Fame. Roy is a shoo-in.
“Winning a Cup does enhance (Hasek’s) chances,” said Muckler, one of the goalie’s biggest boosters, “but I think by the time he’s finished playing, probably he won’t need that Cup to get there.”
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