A HUNTER ON A MISSION : Hard-Nosed Capitals’ Center Sets Tone for His Team’s Stanley Cup Bid

Imagine a soldier, back from war. He carries the scars, the stitches. He’s blocky and powerful, with a full chest and strong arms. Fearless.

Dale Hunter is like that. He has his missions. He’ll do what he has to do.

“They don’t get any tougher,” said goalie Clint Malarchuk, Hunter’s friend for the last eight years. Fearless. That’s Dale Hunter.

Hunter is the kind of player the Washington Capitals always needed. When the going gets tough, he shows up--if he isn’t already in the thick of it. Last Saturday night, he showed up several times when needed, most of all at the end, skating free and lifting the puck into the net in overtime to give the Capitals their long-sought, hard-earned Patrick Division semifinal playoff series victory over Philadelphia.

A veteran of seven hard-fought years with Quebec, Hunter is disliked in places like Hartford and Boston and Montreal especially. But they’d love to have him. After Game 3 of the Capitals-Flyers series, he had to be sewn together--but he played the Flyers game of rough-house hockey, then changed up and beat them with surgical precision.

The Capitals got him to help them beat the Flyers. And he did.

“I guess we were talking about the Philadelphia Flyers as much as anybody--we needed that kind of individual,” Capitals Coach Bryan Murray acknowledged last Sunday after practice. “He had a tremendous impact throughout the series.

“You saw signs in Philadelphia, ‘Dale Hunting.’ And all the talk from the coaching staff that we’ve got to cut down this Hunter guy. Dale took an awful lot on himself, being the hard-nosed guy, being the guy who was willing to do almost anything. He fought Rick Tocchet. He went after (goalie Ron) Hextall. Plus he got five goals. He took a lot of important faceoffs for us. He was a real impact player.”

He played smart, too, the way he would slug it out with the Flyers, then when the need arose, play a purer game.

“He sets a tone,” said Murray. “I think in the first couple games, we were willing to do anything to show that we were going to be there throughout the series, and that’s physical or whatever nature the series was going to go. And after the third game, I asked the fellows not to get involved (in the fighting). Dale Hunter is a very coachable guy. And he fell right in line with our thinking.”

Hunter is the kind of center ice man the departed Bobby Carpenter could never be with the Capitals. Someone to assert himself in front of the goal mouth. Someone who would tell a Flyer which way to the Broad Street subway exit, and back up his words.

A “tough aggressive player,” the Capitals press guide calls him in understatement. Because the next blurb states: “Collected 200-plus penalty minutes in each of his first six seasons.” Only a broken leg slowed him in his seventh season.

“He’s an instigator of trouble on the ice,” said Malarchuk, “and he’s the same off the ice.

“I mean, in the dressing room, if your shoes are nailed to the floor, you know who did it. It’s automatic.”

Look into Hunter’s pale blue eyes and one can see a little bit of devil.

“One time I put my sock on,” said Malarchuk, “and there’s a cockroach in there. He put a cockroach in my sock.”

And they’re the best of friends.

Hunter, 27, grew up tough. He helped plow the fields of his father’s southern Ontario farm, outside tiny Oil Springs. He toiled in the fields in summer and skated all winter. He and his brothers.

Dave Hunter, 30, plays for Pittsburgh. Mark Hunter, 25, for St. Louis. They’re all forwards of the same mold. When Dale played for Quebec and Mark for Montreal, they found themselves on arch-rival teams. The farm boys never fought each other, although Mark once did pull Dale off a Montreal player. Another time, the brothers collided, with Mark suffering a dislocated kneecap that caused him to miss parts of two seasons.

“You kind of ease up a little on your brother,” Dale Hunter said after watching a tape of the closing minutes of Saturday night’s game with his teammates, all sitting around the locker room floor, cheering like so many schoolboys.

“I’m hungry,” said Hunter, as sandwiches were passed. He took one in each hand, a two-fisted eater.

He learned life from his father, Dick, a tough guy himself, who grew soybeans and coached youth hockey and told Dale and his brothers the benefits of carrying a stick high. He’s grown up to do admirable things in hockey: work the corners, “take the body.” He’s the game’s quintessential “mucker” and “grinder” who picks his spots to add touches of grace.

More often, he may be seen playing a straightforward game of devastation. On March 16 in New York, he roared in from the blue line and plowed over Rangers goaltender John Vanbiesbrouck, for which he got off lightly with two minutes.

“That’s one thing you can’t do every game, run a goaltender,” said Malarchuk. “You have to be very selective in the time you do such a thing. He distracts another team. The other team will key on him so much, then he’s the one who’ll kill them in the end.”

Hunter looks comfortable in a hockey uniform, less so after a game. He mixes checked shirts and jackets, with collar tips often bent upward, his tie twisted. He won’t be found in the pages of GQ.

“But you might see him,” said Malarchuk, “in ‘Mr. Tractor Pull.’ ”

Each summer, Hunter goes back to Oil Springs, where he has his own farm and grows his own soybeans. He’s married and has two children. He’s never there anymore for the rugged weather he knew as a kid, skating day and night on frozen patches in wind and bitter cold, and occasionally, too, in the relative warmth of rinks.

Ron, the oldest brother, actually set the standard. He was big in minor hockey, playing for Kitchener. The younger boys marveled at the glorious life in a Kitchener uniform, then followed their instincts and worked at hockey as tirelessly as they did on the farm. “My father always said,” recalled Hunter, “to work hard at the rink.”

The result is that now, in the National Hockey League, only the Sutter brothers (five active) outnumber the Hunter brothers. And Dale, for one, is earning enough to keep his farm equipment upgraded, reportedly a five-year deal with the Capitals worth more than $1 million.

Nobody broke Dale’s leg last season--”I did it to myself.” He got his skate caught and turned his leg and it snapped. For Quebec, it seemed a good time to move him along. The Nordiques took a No. 1 draft choice with Gaetan Duchesne and Alan Haworth from the Capitals for Hunter and Malarchuk. “I think they wanted a first-round draft choice,” said Hunter, “because they were rebuilding.”

They got what they wanted. So did the Capitals.