Around and around they went down the ice, locked in an angry, sweating waltz, each with a fistful of the other's sweater, each refusing to let go.

Stars defenseman Derian Hatcher came away with his stick, which is more than Toronto's Tie Domi, one of the NHL's toughest tough guys, could say.

The Maple Leafs' top line came out of the rush without a goal, too. Hatcher had done his job one more time Saturday, and he has been doing that a lot recently.

You don't tend to notice a defenseman unless he is scoring a rare goal, leveling someone with a big check, making a big mistake or diving to deflect a slapshot with his face. But the rest of the NHL sure is noticing Hatcher, the Stars' soft-spoken 24-year-old captain.

Hatcher, the Stars' defenseman with the long, curly blond hair sprouting wings out of the bottom of his helmet, is playing consistently and with a heightened physical presence this year for the Stars, who have won twice as many games as they have lost.

Considering that Hatcher stands 6-5, weighs 225 and likes to cool down from games by doing sit-ups clutching a medicine ball, that is probably a frightening thought for those who have to try to get a puck past him.

"He's playing more physically, and with more energy," Stars coach Ken Hitchcock said.

"What he's doing now is playing with a tremendous amount of confidence."

Hatcher has flown through some turbulence to get to this point of the season. He was the Stars’ captain last year, and although everyone seemed to be responsible, the team's dismal finish weighed heavily on him in the off-season. Then the team traded his older brother, Kevin, in June to Pittsburgh for defenseman Sergei Zubov, and Derian Hatcher was without his best friend.

A magnificent performance in the World Cup, in which he played for the winning U.S. team, seemed to energize the native of Sterling Heights, Mich. As general manager Bob Gainey said, "He started the season with his sails full of wind."

Hatcher has carried that energy through 25 games. Lately, opponents keep bumping into Hatcher and falling down.

"Sometimes, it just comes to you more, and the hit's there," Hatcher said.

Just by sheer coincidence, they also don't happen to score as much.

It is hard to measure a defenseman's effectiveness, but consider that Hatcher's plus-minus rating after 25 games is plus-4. That means he has been on the ice for four more Stars' goals than the opponents have scored. Last year, his rating was a minus-12.

Hatcher is also one of the primary reasons that the Stars' goaltenders have posted an impressive 2.30 goals-against average, the fourth-best in the NHL. And Hatcher and partner Richard Matvichuk are often on the ice when the other team's top scoring line is on it.

"Everyone knows the more physical he is, the better a defenseman he is," Matvichuk said.

But that is not the whole story. Gainey says that Hatcher, who made his NHL debut at 19 and is now in his sixth NHL season, finally has all the information he needs to play consistently and well. His learning curve has flattened.

Hitchcock says that Hatcher has now established an identity among defensemen, and that identity is as someone who can prevent goals and help muscle the puck out of the Stars' zone.

"Playing well in the World Cup really gave me the boost I needed, " Hatcher said. "The level was just so high, that you either play up to it, or you don't play at all."

That he played well gave him a boost that made up for the disappointment of seeing his brother traded in June.

Kevin Hatcher, a towering defenseman nearly six years older than Derian Hatcher, was traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins on June 22 after two years in Dallas. It was a move both thought might be coming, and Hitchcock explains now that the team had to give up Kevin Hatcher to get a player like Zubov.

That did not make the trade any easier for Derian Hatcher. He says the Stars could not find his brother to tell him he had been traded, so Derian had to break the news. That, he said, was one of the toughest things he ever had to do.

"It was just like losing a good friend," Derian Hatcher said.

He says he still keeps in touch with Kevin Hatcher, who is having a good season for the flailing Penguins. He says he is aware that people are saying he is playing better because his brother is not around, but he does not agree.

"I don't think that has anything to do with it," he said.

Neither does the fact that Hatcher is feeling any less pressure than he did last year - because he says he is actually putting more pressure on himself.

But the Stars helped Hatcher by acquiring several veterans who have shared the leadership role. You might figure that the captaincy might have been yanked from Hatcher after a season like last year, but the subject was never seriously discussed in a pre-season meeting with Hitchcock.

"His basic focus was my play on the ice," Hatcher said.

As Gainey explained, "My own feeling is that when you have somebody as your captain, it's for certain reasons. And those reasons don't change with a bad month or even a bad year. The job, or the responsibility, is a bigger and a heavier load. It's a crisis management job."

There are not as many crises for Derian Hatcher as there were a year ago, and if there is a brushfire or two that breaks out along the way, he thinks that, with the help of the Stars' veterans, he can handle it.

He can handle Tie Domi, can't he?

© 1996 The Dallas Morning News All Rights Reserved

Dave Caldwell / Staff Writer of The Dallas Morning News, Serving notice: Stars' soft-spoken

Hatcher confidently making presence felt., The Dallas Morning News, 12-03-1996, pp 1B.