Expectations High for Buffalo’s Hasek After Amazing Season

The Dominator won’t need piped-in cheers on his home ice this season. He makes his own noise by stopping just about everything that comes his way.

Dominik Hasek has done it all in his extraordinary career except win an NHL championship. And despite his accomplishments, the world’s best goaltender seems more concerned with what he hasn’t got.

“The whole season was great, but if you don’t win the last game of the season, you’re not going to be happy,” he said.

So, Hasek returns for another season in Buffalo to try to add to his trophy case. There might not be any room, though.

He led his Czech Republic team to Olympic gold. He took the Sabres to the Eastern Conference finals for the first time since 1980. He became the first goalie to win the Hart Trophy (NHL MVP) and Vezina Trophy (top goalie) two years in a row. And he picked up the Pearson Trophy, an MVP award based on voting from fellow players.

He also led the league with 13 shutouts and a 93.2 save percentage and had an impeccable 2.09 goals-against average.

“Having him back, you’re almost assured of a playoff spot right away,” Buffalo right wing Matthew Barnaby said. “He’s so good by himself.”

While Hasek didn’t take the Sabres to the Stanley Cup finals, there were rewards he couldn’t have imagined at the season’s start, when he struggled amid the boos of fans angry over his supposed part in the departure of popular coach Ted Nolan.

The jeers got so loud at Marine Midland Arena at the beginning of the season that the Sabres mixed in tapes of cheering fans to drown out the hecklers.

Hasek remembers those ugly fan greetings, which stopped soon after he and the team started winning.

“I’m excited after a win, of course, but it doesn’t change me,” he says. “I know if I lose and play terribly people will boo me.”

There was no booing in his homeland.

After the Czech Republic won gold at the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, countrymen raised banners declaring Hasek “a god.” More than 150,000 people showed up for a team rally in Prague’s Old Town Square. Czech astronomers named an asteroid Dominik.

When a 16-foot replica of Hasek’s Sabres jersey was inflated on his home ice during the playoffs, it seemed particularly fitting for his larger-than-life image.

The celebrity continued after Buffalo ended its layoff run two games from the Stanley Cup finals, when Hasek returned to the Czech Republic for the summer.

He managed to get his fill of his beloved soccer, tennis, squash and in-line hockey with friends in Pardubice, but outings with his wife, 8-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter often ended with a hasty retreat home to escape the flash of fans’ cameras.

Now back with the Sabres, the Dominator is well aware Buffalo is looking for an encore.

“Last season was a very good season for me, but it’s already behind me,” Hasek said. “And now there’s a new season and I know it won’t be an easy season at all. There are more expectations.”

But he approaches the season without any “to-do” list.

“I usually don’t set goals for myself,” he said. “The goal is always to play well and to win as many games as I can.

“My job is to stop the puck and help my teammates win the game.”

He does that job using a self-taught style--a combination of reaching, stretching and flopping with every inch of his body, from the top of his head to the blades of his skates. He’ll drop his stick to grab the puck and roll from one side of the net to the other because standing up takes too much time.

“He’s almost redefined goaltending,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said. “You see a lot of younger goaltenders emulating his style. Some have said it’s not real conventional but there’s a method to his madness. You see him in practice, he rehearses each move.”

At 33, Hasek is more experienced than many of his younger teammates, but “teacher” is not a role for which he’ll volunteer.

“No one taught me to play hockey. I never had a goalie coach when I was young,” he said. “I was just learning from other people, watching them. I think it’s better than to say ‘You have to do this’ and ‘you have to do that.’

“Everyone has to find his own style, whether it’s hockey or anything else.”

But just his presence on the ice does wonders for his teammates.

“It supplies a lot of confidence for the whole team when the MVP of the league is your goaltender,” Ruff said.

And when you’ve got the MVP, there’s certainly no need for piped-in cheers.