Wait irbe wasnt a popular player? There was a time when Irbe was the next big thing before his hand surgery. Like I remember seeing hockey commericals not even in california, and when they would show promos, or beer commercials or whatever it might be, there was a time when Irbe where the clips of random various goals, or saves, might include irbe doing a split save. Hell I forget what video game it was, man maybe it was one of those wacky hockey games, like maybe it was one of gretzkeys game at the time, if a goalie made so many saves in a row, he would then do the splits, and a WALL would pop up behind him which was done as a odd to irbe. He also appeared on that one(god awful)sega saturn video game as the cover star for it, and had his own intermission report(which curiously enough no joke, irbe is also the worst rated goalie in the entire game, go figure that one out and he is the wrong glove hand as well.. cluster f*** of a game but none the less), also again just random triva, I remember for certain video games they would send to kids, the pictures would read something like, win the MVP award with fedorov, make the deek save with bure, and win the vesina all with irbe in the new NHL so and so. There use to be ads like that back in the day. So there was most definitely a time when irbe was not just a big thing in california, but one of the next big things in the NHL.