Dominik Hašek has entered the hockey hall of fame, and it is about time.
Chris Osgood, himself a Stanley Cup-winning net-minder, once said of his Detroit Red Wings teammate Dominik Hasek, “He has the instincts of a Wayne Gretzky as a goalie.”
High praise indeed, and now the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) has seen fit to award the man known to so many hockey fans simply as The Dominator, the highest individual honour that a player can strive for in hockey – a place in the Hall of Fame.
On Monday night in Toronto, the man whom Osgood compared to Gretzky, a Czech Republic-born brick wall in net for so many years, was inducted into a hall so stacked with talent that any self-respecting hockey fan gets chills walking among the displays, placing himself in such exalted company as Hull, Orr, Mikita, Hull junior and the Great One himself. It’s a richly-deserved plaudit for one of the game’s great characters.
The Dominator is one of those guys hockey fans of a certain age are always going to remember, be it for his stonewall-like efforts for his country in the semi-final game of the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, a surprising 2-1 victory for a Czech Republic team given little chance against the juggernaut of Canada.
Remember it? Hasek stood tall in goal against wave after wave of attack from the Maple Leaf squad, and memorably robbed Brendan Shanahan – a shoot-out wizard if ever there’s been one – to ensure the Czechs qualified for the gold medal game.
That day, Hasek played out of his skin, out of his mind, and very much in the mould of the great American goalie, Jim Craig, who similarly battled against the odds to beat the mighty USSR during the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York.
You can make a solid argument that Hasek is the greatest goaltender of all time. Of course, you could also make a solid argument that Martin Brodeur or Patrick Roy deserve to be known as the greatest of all time.
Statistics like the fact that both Brodeur and Roy have won more career games and Stanley Cup championships. Additionally, Brodeur is the all-time NHL leader in shutouts, and Roy has won the Conn Smythe Trophy awarded to the Most Valuable Player in the Stanley Cup playoffs an incredible three times.
Even so, Hasek can point to his career-best season save percentage of .930 or above five times, as far better than the best either Brodeur or Roy could muster: .925 for Roy and .972 for Brodeur, who has today come out and said he wants to play again. That is an unlikely occurrence, for mine, but he has indicated he wants to further those record marks, though obviously not with the team he will forever be identified with, the New Jersey Devils.
Stats say one thing, but it’s gut effort and all-out competitiveness that became Hasek’s real calling card. And what he will likely be remembered for as long as the great game of hockey is played. There’s been no one like the Dominator for single-mindedness and sheer will whenever he’s on the ice. Ask anyone who ever got to an arena early to see Hasek during emerge from the locker room for the first time.
Here was a guy who treated those exercises as seriously as he treated standing between the pipes in a game. By definition, goalies are the most competitive guys on any team – I mean, why else would you want to throw on a heap of gear, and stand between two iron pipes while guys on the other team are alternately trying to slash at you with their sticks and pump frozen rubber discs at you again and again at over a hundred miles an hour?
Recall a great goalie moment from the last few decades and you’re almost certainly going to think of one where Hasek was involved. That’s what happens when a guy wins the Vezina Trophy, awarded to the League’s best goaltender, six times.
That’s a pretty incredible number, especially when you consider the other goalies he was going up against – Brodeur and Roy included. He also led the NHL in save percentage for six straight seasons, beginning on 1993-94 and extending right through to the 1998-99 season.
By any estimation, that’s an incredible stretch, and especially when you consider some of the other goalies plying their trade at that time: Brodeur and Roy, of course, but also Mike Richter, future Hall of Famer Ed Belfour and the Bulin Wall, Nikolai Khabibulin to name just a few others.
After heartbreak in 1999 with the Buffalo Sabres (who will be the team most easily identified with The Dominator’s career) losing the Stanley Cup Final in 1999, the competitor in Hasek wanted out, believing that the team had eroded to the point where he would be unlikely to taste ultimate NHL success with them.
The Dominator was granted his wish: a transfer to a contender, Detroit. Three years later, in 2002, found Stanley Cup glory with the Red Wings, alongside Brendan Shanahan, the man he’d stoned in Nagano four years earlier, and a team featuring up-and-coming superstars like Nicklas Lidstrom and Pavel Datsyuk.
Hasek retired for the first time after hoisting Lord Stanley that year, but the lure of the game brought him back, and his second go-around featured stints playing for the Wings, for Ottawa and for his country in the 2006 Winter Olympic Games and then mentored and Chris Osgood to collect a second Stanley Cup championship in 2008, after being ousted in favour of Osgood in the first round of the playoffs.
That’s the class of the man right there – dumped for a guy who he then went on to support. The Dominator: a good player and a greater man.
“Sometimes it was difficult to listen to people, like, my style is not good enough,” Hasek said recently. “But I’m glad I could prove that my style is good enough.”
You proved it in spades, Dominator. Welcome to the Hall of Fame. All hail Dominik Hasek, one of the greatest goalies to ever line up between the pipes and a man whose legendary competitive spirit will hopefully never be forgotten.
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