Taking Their Best Shots

He has stared down the best shooters Canada could offer in an Olympic semifinal shootout, engineered a gold-medal upset for the Czech Republic at the 1998 Nagano Games and won enough awards to fill a roomful of trophy cases. But Tuesday, when Dominik Hasek started in the Stanley Cup finals for the first time, he felt like a kid again, jittery and jumpy.

“I was nervous before the game, even during the game,” he said. “But I always say there’s nothing bad about it. It’s good to be nervous. It keeps you more focused, more concentrated, and the pressure, I believe, is what helps me to play better.

“I was very nervous, but I played pretty well.”

Only Hasek can say after a 35-save effort against the Dallas Stars in a 3-2 overtime victory pulled off in sauna-like conditions before a hostile crowd that he played “pretty well.” For anyone else, it might have qualified as the performance of a lifetime.

“Dominik saved us,” said Curtis Brown, who intercepted a pass by Dallas defenseman Derian Hatcher and fed Jason Woolley for the game-winner 15:30 into sudden-death play. “As a team, we left too much on his shoulders.”

They left him to face 24 shots in the first two periods and seven in overtime, confident he would rescue them when they gave Dallas 10 power plays. And he did, even though just after making his last two saves, he developed cramps from the liquids he was drinking to combat the oppressive heat.

“The more shots he gets, the better he’s playing,” Buffalo defenseman Alexei Zhitnik said. “He made a couple of great stops.”

But to hear the Stars tell it Wednesday, as they prepared for Game 2 today at Reunion Arena, Hasek was merely another faceless target.

“He had an easy night. I don’t care how many shots we had,” Coach Ken Hitchcock said. “His night was not filled with second and third opportunities. You get to this level, where you have goaltenders like Patrick Roy and Ed Belfour and Curtis Joseph and Hasek, they’re going to make those first saves.

“We have to make life a lot more difficult for him, and I don’t mean to the point where we’re running him. We have to get in a position where the loose pucks in and around the [crease] area, we have to own them. That’s our game. We need to get those second and third shots and get them out of position if we’re going to score.”

Said Dallas center Mike Modano: “I don’t care who the goalie is. If you make it tougher for him to see shots and get bodies in front of him, it’s going to be tough for him.”

Despite winning the Vezina Trophy four times, consecutive most-valuable-player awards, an Olympic gold medal and the Eastern Conference title this season, Hasek had to show critics he had the physical and mental toughness that characterizes elite NHL goalies. Perhaps unfairly, he also had to prove that although he grew up in the Czech city of Pardubice, he has the same hunger to win the Cup as any kid from the Canadian prairies.

During the Eastern finals against Toronto, he was dogged by questions about his fortitude after he declared himself unable to play the first two games because of a sore groin muscle. There should be no doubts now.

“This is my ninth season, so I know what it means to win the Stanley Cup,” he said. “It takes a couple of years to know this feeling. I want to do everything to win.”

He was superb Tuesday in stopping what Hitchcock counted as 21 Dallas power-play scoring chances, although Hasek said he never tallies such things. He lost his stick several times, lunged and flailed and tumbled, but he limited the Stars to one goal--on a power play--until the Sabres found their legs and rallied in the third to take a 2-1 lead. Although Jere Lehtinen brought Dallas even with 49 seconds left, Hasek wasn’t to blame.

“Their goaltender was good for two periods. He held the group together,” Hitchcock said.

Only good, or a clutch player who knew a 2-0 Dallas lead might have been prohibitive and therefore kept his team in the game as much by sheer force of will as by talent?

“He’s changed the way goal is being played,” Sabre defenseman James Patrick said. “He refuses to give up on the puck, even if he’s beat. A guy will beat him clean, but he’ll twist his arm back or his leg and he’ll stop it. He makes so many stops doing that over the course of the year. It’s not a fluke. It looks lucky, but it’s not.”

Anticipating the heat may affect Hasek again today, Sabre Coach Lindy Ruff told his players to ease the burden on him by avoiding penalties and being more disciplined, “to the point where maybe we can’t stress hitting as much as we did.” He added, “For the first two periods we spent a lot of time in our zone. There were a lot of scrambles where Dominik was up and down making saves. A lot of those flurries are the things that really tire you out.”

And if the Stars still think he’s just another masked man, Hasek doesn’t care.

“I have done my job. My job, in the playoffs, there’s nothing about shutouts or goals-against. It’s only about winning,” he said. “My goal is to win the game, to give up less goals than the other goalie, and I have done my job. That is all I can say.”

Hasek in Playoffs

W-L: 12-2

Goals given up: 26

Goals given up per game: 1.9

Saves: 426

Save %: .939

Shutouts: 2

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

DALLAS vs. BUFFALO

Game 1: Buffalo 3, Dallas 2 (OT)

Game 2: Tonight at Dallas, 5

Game 3: Saturday at Buffalo, 5 p.m.

Game 4: Tuesday at Buffalo, 5 p.m.

Game 5: June 17 at Dallas, 5 p.m.*

Game 6: June 19 at Buffalo, 5 p.m.*

Game 7: June 22 at Dallas, 5 p.m.*

*-if necessary