The dominator

Sporting News, The, Nov 6, 1995 by Larry Wigge

The game had been over for nearly a half-hour. But it was like it was being reenacted in front of me.

I asked about a particular second-period save against Brett Hull - one of hockey's best shooters. As he talks about the angle at which Hull came in from right wing for the shot, Dominik Hasek, one of hockey's best goal-tenders, lockers up his left leg, sideways from the hip and incredibly high. He drops to the locker room floor flat on his back, folding his legs under him in contortions similar to a triple-jointed freak at the circus as he talks about the second save he made on Hull's rebound shot. I hear his joints pop as he talks.

It is an amazing show, something I've never seen before - nor do I expect to see again.

Unorthodox. They say Dominik Hasek is unorthodox in the way he stops the puck. By this time, I'm beginning to believe Hasek is just eccentric in everything he does, although he explains that this routine he just showed me is part of his everyday exercise ritual.

"They say I am unorthodox, I flop around the ice like some kind of fish," Hasek says with a deep Czechoslovakian accent. "I say, who cares as long as I stop the puck?'

A big smile crosses Hasek's face. He knows he has put on a show for an unsuspecting reporter and he knows he has proved his point that he is a very special athlete.

The saves on Huff are meaningless in the long list of saves Hasek has made over the last two seasons for the Buffalo Sabres because it is just an exhibition game. Forget that the Blues beat Hasek, 5-0 although General Manager John Muckler will tell you that when he coached the Sabres the last couple of years, he would tell Hasek to chill out for fear that his shooters would get an inferiority complex from being stopped all the time in practice. In other words, he hates to be beaten for a goal, even in practice.

In 1993-94, Hasek accomplished the inconceivable. He replaced the injured Grant Fuhr, a future Hall of Famer; and posted five shutouts - in December. He finished the season with a league-best 1.95 goals-against average - the first time any goaltender posted a sub-2.00 average in the NHL since Philadelphia's Bernie Parent had a 1.89 average in 1973-74.

Last season, he proved it was no fluke by leading the league with an impressive 2.11 average en route to winning his secutive Vezina Trophy.

"When he's in the net, his pads seem to cover post-to-post better than any goalie I've seen," Hull says, shaking his head. "I had heard he likes to stay back in the goal like a lot of the European goalies we've faced. But he's just as aggressive at coming out to stop a shot. He just doesn't give you anything to shoot at."

This is definitely the ugly-duckling-turned-swan story. And there are still those who doubt the beauty of Hasek's expertise.

Hasek jokes about the fate that made him a goaltender during a tryout in his native Pardubice, Czechoslovakia.

"They held a tryout for 6-year-old boys and my father took me there," Hasek recalls. "I didn't even have real skates. I had those blades that you screwed onto the soles of your shoes, but I was tall, and the 9-year-olds didn't have a goalie, so they put me in with them."

Doctors were always amazing at young Hasek because of the amazing things this double-jointed boy could do with his body. The flexibility helped him make saves the other goaltenders didn't - or couldn't.

I watched the older goalies to see what they were doing," he says. "I'd try it all in my practices. But those goalies would stay deep in the net and hope the puck would hit them. I wanted to do more. I had seen film of some of the National Hockey League goalies, and I wanted to make the puck bounce farther away just like they did. I wanted to be an NHL goalie. My coaches just shook their heads at the way I stopped the puck."

Hasek admits he was sort of a rebel in this communist land. But there was no denying this rebel had the chutzpah of a champion.

One year, the team from tiny Pardubice traveled to Kladno to play the junior champions of Czechoslovakia. Proving the twentysomething netminder was still a sometimes absent-minded youngster, Hasek forgot his goalie pads. His coach asked the opposing team if it had a set it could lend him. The opponents did him no favors, however.

Dominik came onto the ice with a pair of short, tattered old junior-size pads. The Kladno players thought they had Pardubice right where they wanted it. But Hasek played like Jacques Plante that night, beating Kladno by a goal and knocking it out of the playoffs.

"I had better pads when I was 6 years old," Hasek says. "But I had a point to make to that team - and I made it."

A Czechoslovakian legend was born that night in Kladno.

After several years of playing for the Czechoslovakian national team, Hasek was ready for the NHL - or so he thought.

All he saw in North America, however, was farmland while riding a bus between International Hockey League cities. He played in only 25 games with the Blackhawks in his first two seasons over here, spending the rest of his time with the team's IHL affiliate in Indianapolis. He couldn't crack the Chicago lineup because he was behind All-Star goaltender Ed Belfour.