For those of you who don’t remember who Patrik Stefan was, he was the player that the Atlanta Thrashers drafted in 1999 ahead of the Sedin Twins. Whoops. That might’ve been the first sign of impending doom for the young Czech who’d immigrated from Eastern Europe in 1998 to play in the now-defunct IHL for the Long Beach Ice Dogs with Mark Messier’s cousin Joby and someone Edmonton Oilers fans might be familiar with, the legendary Louie DeBrusk.
So on this day in 2007, playing for the Dallas Stars Stefan’s career would be summed up in about a 5-second span,
“Patrick Stefan was sitting on the Dallas Stars bench, still swimming in miserable disbelief and reeling from an all-time gaffe when Marty Turco swung by with a suggestion. Moments earlier, Stefan was on the verge of vanquishing any drama on the night by sweeping a puck into an empty Edmonton Oilers net for a two-goal cushion with about 10 ticks left on the clock. Instead, he had a bobble on the edge of the crease that, in operatic fashion, morphed from an embarrassing-yet-harmless blunder to a lead paragraph in his soon-to-be-written career obituary when the Oilers — in the frantic seconds that followed — charged up ice, snapped off some quick passes and tied the hockey game with two seconds remaining in regulation time.
Ales Hemsky was the Oiler who equalized the contest and, by extension, blew the roof off the building and cued immediate and justifiable hyperbole. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen,” declared analyst Ray Ferraro — a one-time teammate of Stefan’s — on the Sportsnet broadcast. “Patrik Stefan, you should be embarrassed for what you just did, that does not belong in the National Hockey League.”
Ferraro’s statement surely captured the consensus of anybody watching, excluding those in attendance who were likely too busy losing their minds to process what just happened. And the part about not belonging in the NHL proved eerily prescient because, about six weeks later, Stefan played his last game in ‘The Show.’” (source)
For those that were at the game that evening, they’ll tell you that the lid nearly blew off the barn when Hemsky scored that goal. Check out the clip below and listen to how incredulous Ray Ferraro sounds… Gotta wonder how many times he got on Stefan’s ass when they were teammates in Atlanta back in the day and some old feelings were coming out again.
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