Of all the accidents on Buffalo ice in four decades of Sabres hockey, Denis Hamel's on December 21, 2000 might have been the most frightening. The fear, really, was of the unknown. Hamel had no broken bones, at least that we could see. He wasn't bleeding. Or convulsing. And that was precisely the problem: Hamel wasn't moving.

As the clock at HSBC Arena ticked toward 16:36 to go in the second period, Hamel split fellow 23-year-old rookie Trent Whitfield and Sylvain Cote at the Washington Capital blue line and fired his big body toward the corner of the rink, hustling side by side with Whitfield to try and beat an icing call. Along the goal line to the right of goaltender Olaf Kolzig, Whitfield put on the brakes. Hamel did not.

Whitfield tossed Hamel toward the end boards, but it didn't appear to be a deliberate attempt to injure. The Sabre left winger lost his balance and hurtled head-first into the Tops sign, only his left arm bracing the fall. Hamel's head seemed to compress against the unforgiving wall, and after he slumped to the ice, his stick slipped from his grip and wedged itself in the crook between his left arm and body.

In a heartbeat, every man on the ice, except Dominik Hasek at the other end — Cap and Sabre, player and official alike — surrounded Hamel in the kind of vigil fans had grown accustomed to seeing around National Football League players. This time, an athlete was face-first on ice, not turf.

Trainer Jim Pizzutelli rushed out, sliding on the ice in his Nike sneakers. The sellout crowd of 18,690 grew quiet. Television replays made the wait more nerve-wracking, frame by frame.

One replay showed a photographer's flash illuminating the scene a second before Hamel hit the wall. Would this be the way we would remember Denis Hamel the hockey player?

For 75 seconds, as Hamel lay perfectly motionless, his head cocked to one side, no one knew if he was going to jump right back to his skates or ever skate again.

Suddenly, Hamel was on his knees, and the crowd was cheering. When Hamel stood up, he got an even bigger hand that grew louder as he skated off the ice under his own power and went down the runway to the lockerroom.

Hamel came back to play a little later, but his teammates never seemed to recover from the emotional jolt. The Caps scored 48 seconds after the incident to tie the game and tallied twice in the third period to win going away, 3-1.

The next day, fans fretted about a loss and the team's mini-slump. It could have been so much worse.

Denis Hamel could have been the next Christopher Reeve, the next Mike Utley, the next Travis Roy, the Boston University freshman and teammate of Chris Drury who in 1995 fell into the boards, shattered a vertebra and became a paraplegic 11 seconds into his college career.

But Denis Hamel remained just Denis Hamel, an obscure winger for the Buffalo Sabres. A hard-working kid from Lachute, Quebec. He wasn't on CNN. Nobody knew who he was, still.

That was his, and our, Christmas miracle.

Postscript

Denis Hamel's luck ran out a month later on Long Island. The kid with a hard shot and a knack for delivering the big hit had scored his third game-winning goal of the season the week before with just 7.9 seconds left against Florida at HSBC Arena on what Rick Jeanneret described as "an absolute bullet." Watch the goal on YouTube.

With four goals in 13 games, he appeared ready to leave the fourth line behind. Against the Islanders, though, on a play that was much more innocent-looking than his crash into the boards, Hamel got tangled up with Zdeno Chara, and the hulking defenseman fell on the Sabre's outstretched right leg, tearing up his anterior cruciate ligament. Hamel this time was carried down the runway, his season over.

In effect, his career in Buffalo was over, too. He returned for the 2001-2002 season and played 61 games, but he scored only twice. He played the bulk of the next season in Rochester, again scoring only twice in 25 games with the Sabres.

The next three seasons saw Hamel play for the AHL Binghamton Senators. During that time, he appeared in only nine games for the parent club Ottawa Senators, but his 56 goals in Binghamton last season earned him a spot with the big team, where he has three goals and three assists in 28 games this season. Hamel is 29 years old.

Trent Whitfield has also shuttled back and forth between the two leagues and currently plays for the Peoria Rivermen of the AHL. He split time between the St. Louis Blues and Peoria last season.