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Dan Schachte won't score a goal in the Stanley Cup finals. But he'll realize one Saturday night when he skates on to the ice at the CoreStates Center in Philadelphia.
He hopes nobody notices.
That's always been the No. 1 goal of the 38-year-old Schachte, who's completing his 15th season in the National Hockey League.
He hopes nobody notices. That's the greatest compliment anyone can pay a linesman.
"In my line of work," Schachte said, "the fewer people who know what you do, the better. The perfect game for an official would be to show up, do the game and, then, afterward have everyone ask, `Who were the officials anyway?' " That extends to his low profile off the ice, whether he's running errands for his wife, Kim, in Madison or rough-housing with their four children in Verona. He doesn't care if nobody notices what he does for a living.
He prefers it that way. Even though he has an office in the celebrity world -- the world of Gretzky and Lindros and Fedorov -- he knows that he can go virtually anywhere in his own hometown without being noticed.
"That's good, that's great," he stressed. "My wife was more excited about this than I was. When we got the phone call, she was calling everyone and I just said, `Honey, would you slow down.
Everyone could find out.' " Maybe it's about time that everybody did find out more about Dan Schachte, the local boy from Monona Grove High School and the University of Wisconsin, where he played junior varsity hockey for Bob Johnson; the local boy who has made good in the NHL.
As it is, Schachte has made good...