The Score is launching a podcast called “When Goalies Were Weird” today, and there were none weirder than the man who back-stopped the Red Wings to the 2002 Stanley Cup, and won another with the Wings in 2008:
The Dominator. Hasek has one of those impeccable nicknames, right up there with “The Great One” for Wayne Gretzky, “The Rocket” for Maurice Richard, and “Mr. Hockey” for Gordie Howe.
What’s been lost in time is that it took a few tries before the hockey world landed on “The Dominator.” Former Blackhawks coach Mike Keenan called him “Dr. Dom” for a bit in Chicago. Broadcasters loved labelling him “Gumby.” And, briefly in the early ’90s, he was known as “The Count.”
Yes, “The Count.” Like Count Dracula.
“We’re going on a road trip, and we’re getting on the plane, and he had an overcoat. He did not put his arms through the overcoat. He buttoned the very top and, (like) back in medieval times, it looked like a cape,” said Mitch Korn, Hasek’s former goalie coach with the Sabres. “And one of the guys nicknamed him The Count.”
“He did not like that,” Korn added. “And it hung around until he got good. And when he got good, it disappeared in a hurry, replaced by The Dominator.”
That anecdote describes Hasek to a tee.
Continued; give it a listen! Dominik Hasek was as complicated a human being as he was plain old strange, so he was and is a fascinating man of many interests…He’s just always been a little…different.
