Posted by admin on 10th, 2008
After 18 seasons in the NHL, 2 MVP awards and 6 Vezina Trophies, “The Dominator” Dominik Hasek has announced his retirement.
“Physically, I’m felling great—as well as ever,” Hasek said Monday as he announced his retirement. “I just don’t feel that I’m ready to compete on the highest level.“I need motivation. Right now, I don’t feel it’s there and I don’t want to disappoint anyone.”
- Yahoo! Sports
Hasek was drafted by the Chicago Blackhawks and spent his rookie years as backup to Ed Belfour. In his career he spent 2 seasons with Chicago, 9 seasons with the Buffalo Sabres, 4 seasons with the Detroit Red Wings and a short 1 season stint with the Ottawa Senators.
During his career, Hasek has won:
- Hart Memorial Trophy for MVP twice (nominated 5 times)
- Lester B. Pearson Award twice (nominated 3 times)
- Vezina Trophy 6 times
- William M Jennings Trophy 3 times
- Stanley Cup in 2002 with the Detroit Red Wings
- The 2002 gold medal at the Nagano Olympic Games for the Czech Republic
Hasek has named on:
- NHL first All-Star Team 5 times
- NHL All-Rookie Team in the ‘91 and ‘92 season
- NHL All-Star Game 5 times (although did not play in 2000 due to injury)
In his NHL Career, Hasek played a total of 735 games, totaling 42836 minutes of ice time. He collected 389 wins, 223 losses, 82 ties and 13 overtime losses with 81 shutouts. His career GAA and SV% stand at 2.10 & .922 respectively.
Posted by admin on 21st, 2008
It’s that time of year again. The NHL Playoffs are just around the corner, and teams are already starting to prepare for the post-season. In the West it’s highly possible that the 8 Playoff teams will be made up of 4 from the Northwest Division, 3 from the Pacific and 1 from the Central. In the East it’s possible that there will be 4 from the Atlantic, 3 from the Northeast and just 1 from the Southeast.
One could argue that the Southeast and Central Divisions are the weakest in their respective divisions, and the current NHL schedule could be seen as biased towards strong teams from those divisions. That is a topic for another day.
Today I want to touch on something that can make or break a game in the NHL, or in fact in any hockey league; Refereeing.
Bad calls are something we learn to live with in professional sports. We must remember of course that the people in the black and white stripes don’t always see things the way we do. There are times however when bad calls have influenced the result of a game. Just this week referees made a bad call and caused a 2 minute minor on a team, then just 30 seconds later failed to pull up a goalie interference call on the opposition team, which resulted in a Powerplay Goal.
The Playoffs however are the be all and end all of NHL hockey. Teams battle it out all season to make the Playoffs and the last thing they want or need are referees not doing their jobs properly.
We can only hope then that we will have a relatively clean Playoff Series, not just from the teams, but also the Referees.
