This Day in Hockey History – June 19, 1999 – Hull Gets Stars’ Point Across

The time approached 2 am, when the second-longest Stanley Cup Final ended the longest NHL season. Game 6 of the finals between the Dallas Stars and Buffalo Sabres began on June 19, 1999 and lasted until 14:51 of the third overtime, just 22 seconds behind the record-setting game in 1990 between Edmonton and Boston. The Stars finally won the game and their only championship thanks to Brett Hull. He scored with his skate inside the crease, causing a controversy with an NHL reviewing rule that was subsequently altered.

Going into playoffs, the Dallas Stars (with 114 points) were again the leader in the standings, whereas the Buffalo Sabres (with 91 points) were the seventh seeded. As expected, the Stars made it through to the finals. The Sabres were more of a surprise, making the finals for only the second time in their history. It had been 24 years since the Sabres lost the championship in 1975. 

Still, the Sabres came out strong by winning Game 1 in overtime with a score of 3-2. The Stars came back to win the next two (4-2 and 2-1). Buffalo took Game 4 (2-1), but Dallas shutout Game 5 (2-0). That gave Dallas a 3-2 lead in the series.

Game 6 began at about 8 pm on June 19. Despite temperatures in the high 80s, fans tailgated outside Buffalo’s Marine Midland Arena. The Stars drew first blood when Jere Lehtinin scored “a fluky goal” through a crack between the post and Dominik Hasek’s hip at 8:09 into the game. Buffalo bounced back when Stu Barnes “fired a wrist shot over Belfour’s blocker” at 18:21 of the second period. The only penalties called the entire game, all during the second session, were two minor penalties for each team. Despite 54 shots on net, the Sabres failed to score again. They actually set a record for the fewest goals scored during a six-game series. Their nine goals totaled two less than the record set by the Toronto Maple Leafs back in 1940.

The game went into overtime, double overtime, and even triple overtime. Then came the moment of truth, at 14:51 into the third overtime session. Thanks to Mike Modano’s second assist of the night, Hull had the puck by the crease. He nabbed the rebound, slid the puck to a better spot, and slid it by the prone Hasek into the net. Hull considers that his most important goal (of the 844 in his career). “It ranks No. 1 to me. There was a boatload of people saying when I was leaving St. Louis, ‘You’re never going to win with Brett Hull on your team.’ To go to Dallas and be the missing piece of the puzzle that’s going to help them win their Cup, and then to go out and score the goal in overtime – who hasn’t sat as a kid on the ice with his buddies and dreamt or pretended that’s the goal they’ve scored? To do it in real life was something special.” Dallas immediately began celebrating, having won their first Stanley Cup championship.

Hasek, as the defeated goalie, tried to put things in perspective later. “But once the game is over, you always have to look forward. That’s the way I always approached hockey. It was my most exciting year of my career in the ’90s. We had a talented team, hard workers, players who could score. We were close. But you never know in this game what can happen. I can still see when Brett Hull got the third shot and put it behind me. Disappointing. So disappointing.”

The furious Buffalo Sabres wanted answers. All season, officials had used video review to disallow goals when players stood inside the crease to shoot. Hull was clearly partially in the blue paint when he scored the game-winner. Yet, the goal was not reviewed during the game. The team was already changing in the locker room when they found out. Buffalo’s coach, Lindy Ruff, yelled at Commissioner Bettman. He explained, “I wanted Bettman to answer the question of why this wasn’t reviewed. He turned his back on me. It was almost as if he knew this goal was tainted.” He told reporters this situation was “our worst nightmare.”

After meeting with the Sabres, officiating supervisor Bryan Lewis and his team reviewed the “sequence dozens of times.” They determined that the goal was good because Hull had possession of the puck the whole time he was in the crease. According to Lewis, they had sent a memo towards the beginning of the season informing everyone that the player could be in the crease as long as they had possession of the puck. Hull later said, “The NHL decided they weren’t going to tell anybody but the teams. … They changed the rule to say if you have control in the crease, you can score the goal, and that’s exactly what it was. But nobody knows that. You can tell people that a million times and they just will not listen.”

On June 21, 1999, the NHL officially announced that video review would no longer be used to overturn goals due to a player being inside the crease. Instead, it was again solely up to the on-ice officials to determine goalie interference. Bettman justified, “We’re relying too much on replay.” This rule adjustment was meant to avoid delays, and according to him, was not related to Hull’s goal.

Hull and Hasek won a championship together in 2002, when they played for the Detroit Red Wings. They never discussed the 1999 ending until their mutual victory. “I just didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to say a word about it, so we walked around it and we’re good friends,” explained Hasek. “Brett is a fun person. He never said one thing about it but then the reporters were asking and we were making fun about it that evening. I think right after the game in the locker room we talked a little and just agreed it was one of those crazy things.”

Back in 1999, Lehtinin won his second consecutive Frank Selke Trophy. His teammate, Joe Nieuwendyk received the Conn Smythe after scoring the winning goals for six playoff games. On the other side, Hasek earned his fifth Vezina Trophy in six years.

Additional Sources:

• Mike Commito, Hockey 365: Daily Stories from the Ice(Toronto: Dundurn, 2018), kindle edition.
• Hockey Chronicle: Year-by-Year History of the National Hockey League(Lincolnwood, Ill.: Publications International, Ltd., 2006), 606-611.
• Sal Maiorana, “Sabres’ dream ends,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 20 June 1999, pp. 1D and 4D.
• Leo Roth, “Sabres dig deep, but it’s still not enough,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 20 June 1999, p. 4D.
• https://buffalonews.com/2019/06/18/buffalo-sabres-dominik-hasek-brett-hull-no-goal-stanley-cup-final-nhl/
• https://thepinkpuck.com/2018/10/09/this-day-in-hockey-history-october-9-2000-a-hull-of-a-score/