Only goaltender to win the Hart Trophy Twice
In case you don’t know, the Hart Memorial Trophy is the NHL’s version of the MVP award. And you don’t see goaltenders win the Hart often. In fact, only seven have won the honor since it was first awarded in 1924. Of those seven players, Hasek was the first and only goaltender to win it twice.
And in both instances, his wins occurred with the Buffalo Sabres, with his first coming in 1996-97 and the second a season later in 1997-98. Each time, Hasek also won the Lester B. Pearson Award (today the Ted Lindsay Award) as the NHLPA’s top player, and the Vezina Trophy, which recognizes the NHL’s top goaltender.
Hasek has also won the Vezina Trophy six times, which is tied with Bill Durnan for second all-time, trailing only Jacques Plante, who has seven. But that’s beside the point. Hasek’s multiple Hart Trophies showed his dominance during an era where the Sabres defensive rotation was not one of the NHL’s best, which further displays just how valuable Hasek was to the Sabres playoff runs in the late 1990s.