The Blackhawks acquired goalie Jeff Hackett from the San Jose Sharks in July 1993 for a third-round draft pick.
Hackett, just 25 then, was coming from a lowly expansion team to Chicago to back up Ed Belfour, who was coming off an All-Star, Jennings Trophy and Vezina Trophy season in 1992-93. "Eddie the Eagle" was 41-18-11 that year, with a 2.59 goals-against average, .906 save percentage and seven shutouts.
The moody Belfour was just 28 himself. He fancied himself not just a No. 1 goalie, but turned out to be a bit of a moody prima donna in nets.
Belfour, inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2011, certainly didn't offer a hand up to a kid he considered a threat. Belfour made it clear to Hackett, a likable kid from London, Ontario, that he should mind his place.
The Hockey News story below from by Mark Brender covers the tiff.
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Ironically, the Blackhawks traded Belfour, an eventual Hall-Of-Famer, to San Jose on Jan. 25, 1997 for three players. That came in midst of their first of five straight losing seasons and a run of nine in 10 when Chicago finished below .500
Hackett took over in nets for the remainder of 1996-97 and was the Blackhawks No. 1 netminder the following season, appearing in 58 games. He was traded to Montréal in a multi-player deal on Nov. 16. 1998.
Hackett's overall numbers with Chicago over six seasons were solid, even with a 63-75-25 record on a team in decline. In 173 games with the Hawks, he had a 2.47 goals against and .913 save percentage,
From The Hockey News via THN Archive. Jan. 30, 1998
By Mark Brender
A verbal assault from Ed Belfour wasn’t the kind of welcome Jeff Hackett had hoped for. He had been the Chicago Blackhawks’ backup goalie less than three months when Belfour first went snarly on him.
On Dec. 29, 1993, in Belfour’s hometown of Winnipeg, Belfour was pulled after allowing two goals on four shots five minutes into the first period. Enter Hackett, who stood on his ear and was named second star in a 3-2 loss, whereupon, back in the dressing room, Belfour gave him a mouthful. “You’re a backup.” Hackett was told. “You’ll never be a No. 1 here. If you have any such aspirations, lose ‘em.”
Hackett was disappointed. The blast took the wind out of his sails, as if to say, “So, you’ve just been traded from one of the worst expansion teams of alltime, where your sorry San Jose Sharks couldn’t sink their teeth into anything tougher than a two-minute power play and your goals-against average looked like a mark from the Russian judge-5.3-but can you handle this?”
Hackett said he learned a lot from Belfour, but over their four years together it was never a buddy-buddy relationship. Last December Belfour pulled a similar stunt after practice, telling Hackett to make sure his sticks, pads and game-day routine when he wasn’t playing didn’t tread on Bel-four’s turf. It didn’t help that while Belfour struggled through a winless month, Hackett could do no wrong.
“That could’ve bothered him,” admitted Hawks’ GM Bob Murray. “I don’t think there was any animosity on (Jeffs) part. Eddie was in a funk and had convinced himself of certain things and Eddie’s such a stubborn guy, when he convinces himself of something he believes it.”
The truth is Belfour would have had to be blind not to see Hackett as a threat.
Hackett’s save percentage was climbing fast, improving five straight years; he finished 1996-97 with a career-best.927, tied with New Jersey Devils’ goalie Martin Brodeur for second in the league behind Dominik Hasek of the Buffalo Sabres.
Since he started working with Hawks’ goalie coach Vladislav Tretiak, Hackett had become more adept at play around the net, his Achilles Heel. Watching the success of goalies such as Belfour, Patrick Roy and Brodeur, Hackett made subtle adaptations to his stand-up, challenging style. Wrap-arounds that gave him trouble stayed out; rebounds stayed in. As defenses improved, the game was being played more on the periphery, so Hackett had to modify his game to protect better against scoring chances in tight.
As he did, two things became clear to the Hawks. One, they weren’t going to be able to sign Belfour, an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 1997. Two, their new No. 1 goalie didn’t have a temper problem.
Yeah, Hackett can handle this. The London, Ont., native had two losses to start the season before missing 11 games with an ankle injury, but since then had posted a 10-7-9 record with a.922 save percentage overall (tied for third in the league) and 2.08 goals-against average (fifth).
Over Chicago’s 7-1-2 run from Dec. 26 to Jan. 15, his GAA was 1.63. He did all this while receiving meagre goals support-an average of just 2.6 per game-from the NHL’s fifth-lowest scoring team.
The Hawks were in the Western Conference cellar until early November, but since then have been sparked by what coach Craig Hartsburg calls a “stronger commitment to each other as a team” and a return to form from three top players: defenseman Chris Chelios, center Alexei Zhamnov and left winger Tony Amonte. Amonte rediscovered his skating game, Chelios returned was back up to his Norris Trophy standards while Zhamnov scored eight goals in 10 games through mid-January.
The Hawks also changed their forechecking system in mid-December, dropping the trap for a more aggressive approach that allows two wingers to attack deep. Defensively, their job is to beat the opposition defensemen back up ice in transition.
But as of the all-star break, they had six players out with injuries, including forwards Ethan Moreau, Bob Probert, Brent Sutter and Sergei Krivokrasov, which led Murray to respond, when asked how good his team can be: “1 have absolutely no idea.”
The only constant has been Hackett.
“It’s tough, but it’s something I’ve always wanted.” Hackett said of the No. 1 status. “I’m not a very happy guy when I’m not in the fire of things.”
Holding the Fort
Since Belfour was traded to the Sharks last January (he signed this summer with the Dallas Stars), the Hawks’ only goaltending concern has been that Hackett would bum out.
Talks have been on-going between Hackett and Hawks’ management all season. Not over salary-Hackett is a bargain at $950,000 a year on the three-year deal signed last season-but staying power. Hartsburg wants Hackett to stop being the first guy on the ice for practice and the last guy off. He feels the routine gets a little tiresome. Hackett is only starting to realize that now.
“I think he’s right,” Hackett said. “Maybe sometimes I’m a little bit thick.”
The work ethic was passed down from his father Ken, an accountant. At tax time, Ken would be holed up in the basement office at home and rarely came up for fresh air.
“We didn’t see him that much,” Hackett said. So he took his dad’s work ethic to the hockey rink, practising hard and long as far back as his junior days with the Oshawa Generals of the Ontario League, through a couple years with the New York Islanders’ organization, which drafted him 34th overall in 1987, and onto San Jose in 1991-92.
In two seasons with the Sharks, Hackett had a record of 13-57-2. Playing in San Jose was the anti-Broadway: If you can’t make it there, you’re finished. Trying to keep spirits up, the Sharks used to gather in a circle for gallows humor sessions the day after a game. It was called stretch-and-tell.
“Everybody’s going to have bumps on the road and that was a pretty big bump,” said former Sharks’ captain Doug Wilson, San Jose’s director of operations. “Jeff Hackett is a warrior. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the success he has today. He deserves it. He never accepted defeat and he never accepted being close.”
Wilson recalled a 2-1 loss to Vancouver Canucks in which Hackett faced 50 shots and was on the verge of collapse from dehydration “one of the best goaltending performances I’ve ever seen.”
Hackett and Neil Wilkinson were traded to the Hawks for a draft pick and goalie Jimmy Waite in the summer of 1993. In Chicago. Hackett promptly went to work establishing a reputation (along with Belfour) as one of the most dedicated Hawks. As soon as Belfour was traded, Tretiak said, Hackett started coming to practice a half-hour before the rest of the team and stayed a half-hour longer.
Last summer. Hackett went to Tretiak’s goalie school in Toronto, just as Belfour had done in previous years. For two weeks he logged four hours of ice time a day, two hours of dryland training and an hour in the classroom. double the workload of the 10 to 18-year-olds out there with him. The only thing he didn’t do was sign autographs. There was time for that on Friday.
“Ed Belfour, he’s very talented,” said 17-year-old camper Matt Passed, a freshman at Norwich University in Northfield, Vt., “but Hackett, when he was out there, it just seemed like he was working all the time.”
“He has had more progress the last two years than ever before,” Tretiak said.
Hackett’s mental game has also undergone much self-scrutiny. Becoming mentally tougher,’ he says, is the key to his transition to a starter. Talent will land the cup of coffee; consistency and the ability to bounce back after a bad game will keep you around long enough for dessert. It’s something Hackett, through his experience in San Jose, has had to learn the hard way. Some of his peers don’t know what he has been through.
“I have total respect for Martin Brodeur, I think he’s a great goalie, he has won a Stanley Cup, he deserves everything he has got,” Hackett said. “It’s just that not everyone has been able to play in that situation and you have to deal with what hand you’re dealt. It’s just a luxury I didn’t have. I think it has made me a stronger person to go through that stuff.”
The next step is to taste success in the playoffs. He didn’t perform up to regular season standards in last year’s six-game opening round loss to the Colorado Avalanche, but even if he had been brilliant, the Hawks’ lack of composure would have killed them. In Year 2, expectations have grown.
Like his father, it seems Hackett will forever be working long hours in his office-on the ice instead of the basement, adding up angles instead of numbers on a ledger, both in search of the formula that adds up success.
“If that’s good enough to win a Stanley Cup. that’s great.” Hackett said, “but if it’s not, I can look in the mirror and not be ashamed of anything.” ■