What Could Have Been: Dominik Hasek & The Chicago Blackhawks

In 1992, no one knew that the Chicago Blackhawks could've had the best goalie tandem of all-time for possibly the next decade. It's game 4 of the 1992 Stanley Cup playoffs, the Chicago Blackhawks are down 3-0 in their series versus the Pittsburgh Penguins and down 2-0 in the game already. Mike Keenan decides to pull his reigning Vezina Trophy winner in Ed Belfour and replace him with a little known goalie from Czechoslovakia Dominik Hasek! Hasek came in to try and stop Mario, Jagr, Francis, Steevens, Thochet and others, it just wasn't enough. The Penguins swept the series to complete the back-to-back cups in both 91' and 92'. Later that summer, Hasek would be moving franchises for the first time in his NHL career.
At the time of the trade, Ed Belfour was becoming one of the top goalies in the NHL. he won the Vezina trophy in 1991 and would win it again in 1993. After going undrafted, Belfour was starting to carve out a pretty nice career for himself and the Hawks wanted him as their starting goalie for the future, which made trading Hasek easier.
Obviously hindsight is 20/20, but to see what the Blackhawks got in return from the Buffalo Sabres is astonishing. On August 7th 1992, the Chicago Blackhawks traded Dominik Hasek to the Buffalo Sabres in exchange for Stephane Beauregard and a 1994 fourth round pick. Just to save everyone some time, Beauregard never played a single second for the Chicago Blackhawks and after the trade would only play 29 more career games.
Now the fourth round pick, the Blackhawks used to select Eric Daze. That's pretty good value to get that deep in the draft if you ask me. Daze spent his entire career with the Blackhawks where he played in parts of 11 seasons with the original 6 franchise. In 601 career games, Daze fell just short of reaching 400 career points as he finished with 398 which is still a pretty darn good accomplishment. When looking back at Daze's time with the Hawks, obviously he was a good player and even made an All-Star game where he was MVP, you feel bad for him in the sense that he barely got to play playoff hockey. Daze's first couple years in the league were the early 90's Hawks trying to finally break through and win the cup. After trading Chelios, Roenick and Belfour, the writing was on the wall that the Hawks would not be contending for a little bit. Right as Daze was starting to get into his prime years, the injuries started to pile on. After playing just 1 game during the post lockout 2005-06 season, Daze retired just a couple years before the Hawks would return to contender status. Who knows if Daze remains healthy throughout his career, maybe he becomes a veteran on that 2010 stanley cup team.
Now the other side of this trade As we previously noted, hindsight is 20/20, and the Hawks had a Vezina winner already in Belfour. It's just so hard to think the Blackhawks traded Dominik Hasek just 25 games into his NHL career. I'm pretty confident in saying that if the Hawks don't trade Hasek, he doesn't become a top 3 goalie of all-time. What we do know is that being traded to Buffalo allowed Hasek to get some games under his belt, get comfortable, and arguably be the league's best player for a couple years. Not just the best goalie, the best player. 2 time Stanley Cup champion, 6 time Vezina trophy winner, 2 time Hart trophy winner, 2 time Lester B. Pearson trophy winner the list goes on and on. That's not even all his accomplishments, and I didn't even have to rattle his stats of. I'll just give you guys the jist. 389 career wins, a .922 career save percentage, a 2.20 goals against average and these are just in the regular season. His playoff numbers are almost identical. And last but certainly not least, in 2014, he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. It is amazing what Dominik Hasek did in his career, also doing so at a much later age than most.
https://youtu.be/z-VhGBXu0dM

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