EDMONTON - If it is true that Dominik Hasek has really retired, this skin and bones goalie with, as he playfully said in an old Mastercard TV commercial having "the spine of a slinky," where does he rate amongst the great puck stoppers?

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He's the only goalie to win more than one Hart trophy, winning back-to-back MVP nods in'97 and '98 when only a very small group of goalies have ever won it even once. He was also second to Sergei Fedorov in '94.

Only Jacques Plante, with seven, won more than Hasek's six Vezina trophies as the best netminder. And only Glenn Hall, with seven, was named to the first all-star team more than Hasek's six.

The 43-year-old goalie, who was picked 207th in the 1983 draft, didn't become an NHL starter until 1993 when he was 28 years old. He didn't leave the Czech Republic for the North American game until 1990. Yet, he still won 389 NHL games and had 81 shutouts.

In the Hockey News's list of Top 50 Players of All-Time, published in the late '90s, Hasek didn't make it because he'd only been starring in the league a few years. There were only six goalies listed in the top 50 (Terry Sawchuk at No. 9, Plante at 13, Hall at 16, Ken Dryden at 25, Patrick Roy at 35 and, George Hainsworth -- who starred in the late '20s and had 94 career shutouts -- at No. 46. In an addendum when the hockey bible expanded the list to the top 100, they had Hasek at No. 95.

I suspect, if they had a recounting of votes today, Hasek would easily make the top 50. He's in the top seven or eight goalies who ever played -- Sawchuk, Plante, Hall, Roy, Martin Brodeur, Dryden and Grant Fuhr.

He'll be a first ballot entry to the Hockey Hall of Fame when eligible in 2011, a totally unique netminder who wore a cage mask and started with No. 31, not his most famous 39.

"A great goalie, for sure ... just look at what he accomplished with all his stats, what he did, even playing on bad teams. He found a way to make bad teams good," said Fuhr, a Hall of Famer, who was on the same Buffalo team with Hasek in the early 1990s.

Hall acknowledges Hasek's spot in the history books as a wonderful puck-stopper, but doesn't like comparing goalies, especially from different eras.

"Back when I played, I thought Sawchuk (103 career shutouts) was the top goalie in the league, but there are far better goalies today than he was," said Hall.

Hasek took average teams, like the 1999 Sabres, and willed them to the Stanley Cup final, only to lose on Brett Hull's toe-in-the-crease goal in Game 6 against Dallas, deep into overtime.

Nobody's ever played quite like Hasek, as well or as quirky. He's well-known for those snow-angel stops in the net, diving onto his stomach, or flopping onto his back, legs akimbo, all the while dropping his stick in the crease to smother pucks, not with his catching mitt, but with his blocker.

He had no apparent style. He just stopped pucks.

"Watching him at the beginning nobody really knew what to expect from Dom, because of how he played," said Fuhr. "Playing with him you realized what a great athlete he was, though. He had this competitive desire where he tried on every single shot, every day, even in practice. That's what you're supposed to do, I believe, but some days you're tired and it's hard, but Dom found a way to do it, and with the unorthodox style he played, that took a lot of energy. The people that played with him every day, we're impressed, believe me."