Dominik Hasek retired yesterday.

View Large

Goaltender Dominik Hasek, a native of the Czech Republic who lent a unique style to his craft, announces his retirement from the Red Wings during a media conference in Detroit yesterday.

Photograph by : Rebecca Cook, Reuters

ARTICLE TOOLS

• Printer friendly
• E-mail

Font:

• *
• *
• *
• *

This time, he might even mean it.

A physical freak of nature, Hasek, 43, retired once before, but came back to torture and tease with his talent, including an ill-fated stint during the 2005-06 National Hockey League season with the Ottawa Senators, when he couldn't, or wouldn't, will his body to compete in those Stanley Cup playoffs.

With Hasek unable to rebound from an adductor muscle injury suffered at the 2006 Turin Olympics, the highly rated Senators fell in the first round of the postseason to Dom's old team, the Buffalo Sabres.

When Hasek wasn't invited back to Ottawa in the summer of '06, he rejoined another former club, the Detroit Red Wings, a move that worked out splendidly on one level, not so well on another.

For the second time as a Red Wing, Hasek drank a champion's champagne last week as Detroit beat the Pittsburgh Penguins in a six-game final, but this time he was an innocent bystander as Chris Osgood played goal.

In contrast to 2002, when Hasek was his Dominating self with six playoff shutouts to lead Detroit to the Cup, this spring Hasek faltered in the opening-round series versus Nashville, losing the starting job to Chris Osgood in Game 4. Hasek didn't play again, his NHL career ending as it began: as a backup.

Just five days after sharing in the Cup celebration, Hasek announced he was leaving the game. If he carries out the threat, hockey has just lost a brilliant performer and world class oddball.

Even given the usual flakiness quotient allowed a goaltender, Hasek was off the charts, utterly unpredictable on and off the ice.

Martin Brodeur, one of Hasek's peers, toured Europe with Hasek during the 2004 Worldstars event, killing time amid the NHL lockout.

"We were often lucky if (Dom) arrived five minutes before game time," Brodeur said in his biography, (italics)Brodeur: Beyond the Crease (end italics), co-written with Damien Cox. "One game, he didn't make it at all, and another day he was sound asleep on a massage table just before the game started, so I had to play."

His backup goalies in the NHL can relate to that: Dom declaring a few minutes before game time that he wasn't up to starting.

Here in Ottawa, we had a ringside seat for some of Hasek's antics, none stranger than the 1997 playoffs. In Game 3, Hasek apparently tweaked his knee, bolting off the ice with remarkable swiftness for an injured player, never to return in the series. Steve Shields finished the series in the Sabres net, helping Buffalo beat the Senators in seven games.

When a Buffalo sports writer accused Hasek of quitting on his team, Hasek shoved him in a corridor, and later apologized to his team for his behaviour. The circus theme would be repeated during Hasek's lone season with the Senators, as teammates, media and fans wondered if and when he might return to action.

An enigma, yes, but, when he was on his game, Hasek was one of the finest goaltenders of all-time, a certain Hall of Famer, one of the few men of the crease capable of getting into the heads of enemy players.