Lorne Henning remembers when Jeff Hackett broke in as an NHL goalie seven years ago. “He was always getting lost,” recalled the Blackhawks assistant coach, who was an assistant with the New York Islanders at the time.
“He could never find the rink. He could get lost in the parking lot. He had a brutal sense of direction.”
That could have served as a metaphor for Hackett’s career. He spent much of his adult life a lost soul, always searching for something, never finding it.
Until this season when Hackett, 27, finally found himself. A movie buff, Hackett’s favorite film is “The Shawshank Redemption.” This, his turnaround season, could easily be titled “The Goaltender’s Redemption.”
A lifetime loser–he had a 25-97-8 record entering his sixth full National Hockey League season–Hackett has emerged as a winner, good enough to share playing time with No. 1 goalie Ed Belfour.
Earlier this season, Hackett tied the club record with eight straight victories. And even if he did appear to lose his way a few times in Friday night’s 4-2 loss to Los Angeles, he was still on solid ground as one of the league’s top five goaltenders in goals-against average and save percentage.
Yet if it appears that he now is headed in the right direction, Hackett still approaches every curve with caution.
“You can’t worry about tomorrow until it comes,” he said. “You can’t get caught up in dreams. You have to take one game at a time because you never know what’s going to happen.
“Hockey is a funny game. I’ve seen a lot of things already in my career and I hope to see a lot more. You can’t predict the future. I’m just happy I sort of picked up my career again.”
The career was born in the basement of his home in London, Ontario, when he was 4 years old.
“My older brother, Chris, needed something to shoot at,” Hackett said.
Chris eventually began shooting at iron rims and became an outstanding schoolboy basketball player. But beginning at 6, Jeff was always a hockey goalie.
“Everyone likes to try it (playing goal) and see what it’s like,” he said. “The weird ones stay in it, the normal ones go on to something else.”
Hackett appears more normal than most goalies, although it’s difficult to understand why, considering all he’s been through. After an outstanding career in junior hockey, he got a shot with the Islanders, playing in 13 games in 1988-89 after only half a season in the minors. He was 20.
“When he came to us he was a kid out of the juniors,” recalled Hawks center Brent Sutter, who was with the Islanders then. “With a goaltender, that’s such a big difference. You’re facing shots that are obviously much harder than you’re used to. You’ve stepped up two leagues, past the minors, and now you’re in the major leagues.”
For a kid, he didn’t do all that badly. Alternating with another young goalie, Mark Fitzpatrick, now with the Florida Panthers, Hackett went 4-7 with a 3.53 goals-against average for the rest of that year.
He spent all of the next season with Springfield, a move he called “very important for my development. You’re playing in a less pressurized atmosphere and learning the game. It’s another stepping stone. Coming from juniors, the speed of the game is just incredible. You have to make a lot of adjustments. As a goalie, you have to play a lot and you have to learn the game.”
He didn’t waste his one full year in the minors, helping Springfield win the Calder Cup and being named most valuable player in the playoffs.
He returned to the Islanders the next year, and although he won only five games, one of them caught the eye of Hawks General Manager Bob Pulford.
“He played in the Chicago Stadium one night and he had 52 shots on goal against him and he beat us,” recalled Pulford. “You don’t forget things like that.”
Hackett would like to forget at least the second of the two years (1991-93) he spent with the expansion San Jose Sharks.
“The first year was really kind of exciting,” he remembered. “Everyone was in the same situation. We were all thrown in together. We had a decent year. We were very competitive. We didn’t get blown out very often.
“The second year was a total disaster. Because they’d won the championship in the minors with their team in Kansas City, (management) wanted to reward their kids and they got rid of a lot of the veterans. It was too much of a change too fast. All the togetherness we had was gone.”
It’s hard to imagine how a goaltender could have a worse season than the one Hackett endured that year. He was 2-30-1 with a 5.28 goals-against average. He knew he wasn’t that bad even though “my stats were horrible,” he said. “There were some nights I played great and we lost 2-1. Some nights you’d let in five goals and you knew you had played darned well. If you weren’t good on any given night you knew you were looking at six or seven goals.”
Hackett acknowledged he was depressed by his nightmare season.
“I had to battle through it,” he said. “I’ve always had a lot of support from my family. They’ve given me a deep belief in myself.”
Others still believed in him too. Through all the ugliness of that season, Pulford could still see the young goaltender who had beaten his Hawks that night.
So Pulford traded for him, not that he or anyone else could foresee what Hackett would become.
For all of his career, Hackett has been in the wrong place at the wrong time. With the Islanders he was too young. With San Jose he was the whipping boy for an expansion team. With the Hawks he was an afterthought on a team that had a goalie who didn’t need a backup.
Last season, his second with the team, he played in only seven games, and won only once.
“I could sense my game picking up,” he said. “The lockout helped me. It let me get away from hockey and made me appreciate the game a lot more.
“I’m still a pretty serious guy, but I think I went over the edge before, trying to worry about too many things I can’t control.”
His marriage during the summer of 1994 was another calming influence.
“My wife, Cheryl, has had a tremendous influence on my life,” he said. “Now when I come home we can talk about something different and not let what’s happening at the rink stay on my mind.”
On the ice, he’s been influenced most by two members of the select fraternity of goaltenders–Ed Belfour and Vladislav Tretiak. Belfour is the Blackhawks goalie who both stands behind him and stands in his way if Hackett hopes to become a full-time starter.
Tretiak, the renowned goaltender from the former Soviet Union, is the goaltender coach Hackett credits with helping him improve technique.
“The goalies in Chicago are the luckiest goalies in the league,” Hackett said. “We’ve got the best goalie probably ever to play the game teaching us.”
Because of his work ethic, Hackett also has the respect of his teammates. It’s the reason Belfour is supportive, rather than jealous, of Hackett’s new-found success.
“I feel real happy for him,” said Belfour, “because I’ve seen all the work he’s put in. That’s where I come from too. He was a good goalie when he came here. Now he’s better.”
“I’m really happy for him,” Sutter said. “I’m proud for him because he finally got the opportunity and proved he can play with the best of them.”
“Certainly he’s come a long way,” Pulford said. “He’s a fine young man and I couldn’t be more happy for him. At the start of the season he was a backup and now he’s proved he can play in this league.”
