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It's Hard Work Being Hasek - July 1, 2002 - Vol. 55, Issue 39 - Mark Brender
Themost relentless player in hockey says he never wants to strap on the pads again unless he’s teaching kids. And to think that when he arrived in North America 12 years ago, no sane goalie prospect would have dreamed of following this guy’s example. Safe to say he won us over long before he won his Cup.
So see ya, Dom. It’s been fun watching.
Dominik Hasek mused about turning his back on the NHL once before, as a member of the Buffalo Sabres, but that was when he didn’t have his name on hockey’s ultimate prize. Now he has no reason to come back
For a man who scripted his own departure in his mind long ago, that must be above all a great relief.
The enduring image will be of Hasek jumping in the air with the seconds ticking down on his career in Game 5 of the 2002 Stanley Cup final, knowing the only team trophy to elude him was finally his. In the dressing room he was giddy like a school boy The joy released was the knowledge he could retire in peace.
There are other images: Hasek stoning five Canadian snipers en route to gold at the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan. Final shooter Brendan Shanahan turned into the corner, head down in disgust, as Hasek arched his head back toward the heavens in celebration. Another snapshot: Hasek leading a lunch-bucket Sabres crew all the way to Game 6 of the Cup final in 2000 before being beaten by Brett Hull’s triple-OT foot-in-the-crease goal, and bitterly denouncing the tainted result afterwards.
When he won his first Hart Trophy in 1997, he was so messed up with emotion he could hardly speak.
We’ll remember his quirkiness and his quickness and his acrobatic craziness. We’ll remember him in the dressing room wearing nothing but underwear and black dress socks pulled up to his knees. We’ll remember the way he slammed his stick on the ice during games when the puck was wasting away in the neutral zone, unaware he was the only person in the rink who knew why he was doing it.
Most of all, though, it will be Hasek’s relentlessness that lingers. Hasek quite possibly drove himself harder than any goalie who has ever played, perhaps harder than any skater who ever played. Relentlessness isn’t a quality normally associated with goaltenders (but what about Hasek was ever normal?). Determined muckers in the corners, grinders on the forecheck, crease crashers undeterred by repeated cross checks to the back, these are the players we say are relentless. Yet in the same way, Hasek was always, always, always in the shooter’s face, every time, every place.
Everything was done with a purpose. On the morning of Game 5 of the final, Hasek was out on the ice late in practice, sweating heavily A bunch of Wings were crowded around the crease, trying to stuff the puck past him. Even in these goof-arouhd drills, Hasek never dogged it. Was he doing it because it was fun? Partly. And that’s one of the things he said he will miss-stopping guys in practice. But one suspects fun was the byproduct of doing it because it was necessary.
“I’ve tried to score on him in practice every day and I can’t do it,” Czech teammate Martin Rucinsky said in Nagano. “Usually in a situation like that (on a breakaway) I score about 50 per cent of the time, but I couldn’t beat him. Not once.”
So when Hasek says he doesn’t have the fire to continue, it’s because he’s already spent so much. Out of that fire Hasek created a mystique that only Wayne Gretzky in his prime could match. From the mid-1990s, on youknew Hasek would be the top goalie just as you once knew Gretzky would win the scoring title. Nothing else would have made sense.
Six Vezinas in eight seasons? The only others to do that were Jacques Plante and Bill Durnan. Don’t bet on it happening again.
