When the Winnipeg Jets unveiled the curly-haired kid ticketed to be their future, they made a gallant effort at low-keying it, trying to mimimalize the pressure and bring public expectations down to a simmer. They hosted the signing at the intersection of Portage and Main, where Bobby Hull had a decade earlier put his John Hancock on a million-dollar contract to instantly legitimize the fledgling World Hockey Association.

And to introduce their phenom, they had him alight from a Brink's Truck, of all things.

	By the time Dale Hawerchuck made it to his first Cup finals with Philly: "I was too banged up to help."

"I never really thought about it at the time," said Hawerchuk from his horse ranch 40 minutes outside Toronto. "I was pretty confident in my abilities from the time I got there. I'd been through my last year of junior getting a lot of attention.

"So I just kind of showed up and said 'Okay, whatever you guys want...'"

"Too much?" boomed John Ferguson, the Jets' general manager at the time. "No way. We wanted to make a splash. We knew he could handle it. You've gotta remember, we'd been biding our time, waiting two years for this kid.

"He was 'The Franchise.' Period.

"Does he deserve to be in the Hall? Damn right he does."

Fergie, of course, spent his entire career surrounded by Hall of Famers in Montreal. So he knows of what he speaks. And while Hawerchuk may be the least well-known of the Class of 2001 -- to hockey fans of today -- he is every bit as deserving.

"You know, it's an honor, of course," said Hawerchuk, "but it's not something that I've thought about since retiring. To me, Bobby Orr is a Hall of Famer. When I see him now, and talk to him, I'm still a kid, you know? He's BOBBY ORR!

"It's wild to think I'm going to be in there alongside him and Hull and Howe ... well, it's unbelievable."

How long did it take Ferguson to realize he had something special?

"First game," he replied unhesitatingly. "I'd like to say first shift, but I can't be sure. Anyway, early on, he absolutely turned Carol Vadnais inside out. This 18-year-old kid, against a pretty darn good veteran like Vadnais. Absolutely inside out. And I kind of chuckled to myself, like 'Yeah, he is gonna be that good.'

"I scouted him extensively in junior and, well, you'd had to have been blind not to see what a talent he was. Still, some of our scouts wanted me to take Bobby Carpenter first. No way. I knew Hawerchuk was the real goods."

Carpenter wasn't the only alternative who was eligible for the 1981 draft. Ron Francis, Al MacInnis and Grant Fuhr also were selected in the first round.

Hawerchuk would go on to play in 1,188 NHL games, racking up 1,409 points along the way. He was awarded the Calder Memorial Trophy as the league's top rookie in 1982, enjoyed six 100-point seasons as a Jet, participated in five All-Star Games and was the league's second all-star team center in 1995. In a golden era for centermen -- Wayne Gretzky, Peter Stastny, Bryan Trottier, Denis Savard, Marcel Dionne, Mark Messier, Mario Lemieux and Bernie Federko, as a teaser -- Dale Hawerchuk held his own. His 103 points as a rookie have been bettered by only Teemu Selanne's 132 and Stastny's 109.

	Dale Hawerchuck closed out his career with the Flyers, registering 12-22-44 in 51 games.

Yet to many fans Hawerchuk's induction into the Hall might be met with a quizzical stare. He never, for instance, played on a Stanley Cup winner, coming closest with Philadelphia only in his final season as a professional. He wasn't lavished with near the recognition he deserved, spending his peak seasons in the relative hinterland of Winnipeg.

"That might've hurt me a bit," he acknowledges. "But I was so concerned about trying to find ways to win hockey games, it was really never an issue with me.

"I've always said the best time in any hockey player's life is that 30 seconds to a minute right after you've won a championship, sitting in the dressing room with the guys you've shared this accomplishment with. Just the smiles, and the satisfaction. I've been lucky enough to experience that in two Memorial Cups and two Canada Cups. It would've been great do to it in a Stanley Cup, too, but it wasn't to be for me.

"The frustrating thing about Philly was that by the final, I was too banged up to help.

"But I never concerned myself with publicity or anything like that. I just wanted to win."

This wasn't exactly an instantly recognizeable star. In attendance at the 1984 All-Star Game in New Jersey as Winnipeg's player union representative, not as an all-star, during Hawerchuk's third year in the league, he was approached in the Loew's Glenpointe coffee shop by a familiar figure, Campbell Conference coach Glen Sather.

After the usual pleasantries, Sather said: "It's time to go."

Hawerchuk looked a trifle confused.

"You're coming, aren't you?" Sather persisted. "We've got a team meeting."

"But I'm not," Hawerchuk assured him, "one of the players."

Sather squinted. "You are Brian Bellows, aren't you?"

Brian Bellows could have only wished.

At the induction ceremony in Toronto, John Ferguson will be in attendance. How could he be anywhere else? Originally he'd been scheduled to be scouting prospects in Germany but has rejigged his schedule to be there for his former captain.

"He's a special kid, no doubt. I don't think people outside Winnipeg understood how much he meant to our hockey club. He's still the only North-American born rookie to score 100 points. He was the youngest player in the league at the time.

"He wasn't the smoothest skater ever but that never worried me. He'd been blessed with so much hockey sense. I've seen a lot of smooth skaters over the years with no hockey sense, and without it, they're absolutely lost as to what do with their skating ability.

"Absolutely great anticipation."

That anticipation, the drive to excel in difficult circumstances carried Dale Hawerchuk a long way -- and all the way to the Hall of Fame.

And the Brink's Truck? Turns out Fergie was right. Turns out that PR stunt wasn't laying it on a bit thick.

Because for the following 16 seasons, Dale Hawerchuk proved to be as good as money in the bank.

George Johnson is a columnist for the Calgary Herald.