Late in the third overtime of the sixth game of the Stanley Cup final, Hull - despite tearing both sides of his groin earlier in the match - got onto the ice for a quick emergency shift to replace Benoit Hogue, who had broken his stick. The 1998-99 NHL season was plagued by long video replays of many, many goals, because the league had instituted a rule to protect goalies: even the tiniest fraction of the scoring team's player's skate in the crease would negate a goal. The only major differences between the Cup final and when Hrkac played for a terrific junior team were Hull and the location of his left foot.

Sport, in all its beauty and pain, encapsulated in two disparate dressing rooms.

It reminded me so much of championship hockey games at any level tense play, energetic overtime, an ecstatic winner, a devastated indignant loser. 'A lot different than the Orillia Travelways, eh Milty?' Hrkac (rhymes with circus) laughed.Īctually, I had been thinking just the opposite. Right above Hrkac, perched on top of the row of wooden lockers, new Dallas hero Brett Hull was sipping beer, basking in his first Stanley Cup championship and occasionally adding his comments to our conversation.

Inside, hours after midnight, I was in the visitors' dressing room of Buffalo's Marine Midland Arena talking to Dallas Stars' centre Tony Hrkac, whom I'd covered almost daily in Jr. Bitter at the NHL, and especially its commissioner, and resentfully wondering why things like 'Wide Right!' and, now, Brett Hull, always happen to them. Outside, although it was halfway to dawn, Buffalo sports fans were still awake and still seething.

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