A League Of His Own

The hottest goaltender in North America won’t be in Buffalo when the NHL playoffs begin today. He won’t be in Detroit or New Jersey or Denver.

The hottest goaltender in North America won’t be on any of the old, familiar rinks, a fact that led Phoenix Coyote owner Richard Burke to Nikolai Khabibulin’s doorstep in the days before last month’s trading deadline, according to a high-ranking NHL official.

Burke’s club has made the NHL playoffs but it was something of a struggle, in part because the Coyotes don’t have contract holdout Khabibulin, the 11th-hour negotiations having gone nowhere, again.

“If I start it,” Khabibulin said, as if there were no choice in it, “I’ve got to finish it up.”

A slight smile escaped from beneath the cool eyes of the hottest goaltender in North America, eyes that for five seasons stared from behind an NHL goalie mask, eyes that turned away from a negotiating table months ago, never, he said, to return.

A two-time NHL all-star in the prime of his career, Khabibulin, 27, completed practice for the International Hockey League’s Long Beach Ice Dogs on a sun-streaked morning inside the Long Beach Arena. Later that night, 3,186 watched him stop, often brilliantly, all but one shot against Manitoba.

Nearly a month since the NHL’s March 14 trading deadline, his NHL season officially lost, Khabibulin is 31 games into his IHL career. He has a 1.68 goals-against average and a .935 save percentage, both best in the league, and five shutouts. Even with Tuesday night’s loss at Utah, the Ice Dogs have won 11 of their last 14, all with Khabibulin in goal.

“He’s not mad about being here,” said teammate Mike Matteucci of Khabibulin. “It looks like he’s having fun out there. He’s not here to pout, like a lot of guys would.”

There is no judging a man’s principles, even if by bending them he would still be a multimillionaire. Khabibulin said he cannot relent, now that he has stated his intentions.

With the IHL playoffs starting next week, the strong, silent Russian plays in hockey limbo, an NHL holdout, an IHL star, wondering perhaps why it has to come to this. Coyote management too, has principles.

“I don’t think it’s that easy,” Khabibulin said. “I mean, let’s face it, I’m losing money right now. I don’t live in my house. But, it’s OK. It could be a lot worse. I’m fine with that.”

Khabibulin will earn about $100,000 for the Ice Dogs, a sizable chunk of the $1.2 million General Manager-Coach John Von Boxmeer budgeted for his payroll, and he stays in a former teammate’s home in Anaheim Hills, not his own in Scottsdale, Ariz. His daughter, Alexandra, is 7, first-grade age, and not in school.

“We bought some books,” Khabibulin said.

A Group 2 restricted free agent after last season, when his goals-against average was a career-best 2.13, Khabibulin could not come to terms with the Coyotes. When the club denied his request for $20 million over five seasons, Khabibulin said he would never again play in Phoenix. Coyote General Manager Bobby Smith said there would be no more contract discussions, a stance that apparently changed as the trade deadline approached and the Philadelphia Flyers, among others, clamoring for Khabibulin.

That is why, in the prime of an emerging career, Khabibulin played in a near-empty arena, 3,000 miles from Atlanta, where at the same time the Coyotes won in front of more than 15,000 fans.

The IHL game is showy and hip. The hockey is serious and edgy. The independent Ice Dogs are the model organization.

Somehow, in the middle of it, stands Khabibulin, turning away shots with breathless precision, waiting for real life to resume.

“Of course I would like to play in the NHL right now,” he said. “I mean, if I don’t play, I don’t get a chance to win the Stanley Cup. It’s that simple. But I have to do what I have to do. I’m still young and I think I still have a few years ahead of me.”

He does not appear to be a desperate man, even as his season melts away, even as the summer nears, even as the days passed without a telephone call from Smith. If the Coyotes were desperate, they didn’t show it. When veteran goaltender Sean Burke injured his thumb early in the season, it didn’t thaw negotiations in the least.

“I don’t know how long it’s going to be,” Khabibulin said in early March. “I’ve said lots of times, we’re going to wait it out. . . . If it happens in the summer, it’s fine. If it happens next season, it’s fine too.”

Alexander Khabibulin, Nikolai’s father, has a relentless sense of honor and principle, according to his son, and Nikolai figures that’s where he gets it. Retired from his life’s work as a maintenance man in a concrete factory, Alexander would understand his son’s predicament.

“Never, ever, would he say he was going to do something and not do it,” Nikolai said.

He cites the principle of it, the same stringent standard that caused Khabibulin to boycott the 1998 Olympics because of an old feud with the Soviet Union’s national program. He would have preferred to play, but chose not to. He would prefer to earn millions in the NHL, even at a lesser contract, but chooses not to, not if it demeans his sense of fairness.

Ice Dog General Manager and Coach John Van Boxmeer said, “When you’re a player, you have your own sense of self-worth, what it is you feel you’re worth, and what you feel you should be able to earn in the marketplace. When it’s all said and done, you have to live with yourself. You have to do what you feel is right for you. He’s doing that and he believes in what he’s doing. Really, that’s all that matters.”

As a result, however unlikely, he arrived in Long Beach in mid-January. He immediately impressed the organization with his work habits and professional conduct. He was polite, enthusiastic and felt bad when another goaltender was cut to make room. In fact, he apologized to the man.

“He’s not just down here to play the games and not worry about the outcome,” Van Boxmeer said. “Obviously, he’s here to stay in shape, but he’s playing to win. I’m sure [the contract impasse] is something he deals with every day. At the same time, this is what he does for a living.”

Later that night, in front of that small crowd in that minor league building, Khabibulin won for the 19th time. He happily accepted the congratulatory taps from his teammates, the chants of “Boo-lin!” from the knot of fans behind the far goal. They call him, “the Bulin Wall.”

He would return to his wife and daughter in Anaheim Hills, to someone else’s home, to something much less than $4 million a season.

And as he pulled a sweater over his head at the end of the night, he waved at a visitor. The hottest goaltender in North America asked, quietly, “Do you have any of the NHL scores?”