A quick story about Matthew Barnaby:

He is 16, playing midget AA hockey in Quebec. Playing hockey costs money.Barnaby's mother, Sandra, and brother, Brent, 13 years his senior, are struggling to pay the bills. Things get so bad that there is no money for Matthew's hockey fees.

A decision is made. Matthew will quit school for a while and join Brent to work at the local lumberyard in Nepean, a suburb of Ottawa. He'll make some quick money, then return to school.

"He was a good worker," Brent says of his little brother, "but I think he realized it might be more fun to earn his living playing hockey."

Today, Barnaby gets his fun from running forwards twice his size, playing the role of the guy you love to hate, watching first-round draft picks like Eric Lindros go home early while late-rounders like himself advance deep into the spring. His fun is scoring five goals in two rounds of the playoffs, and in standing right behind Dominik Hasek as reasons why the Sabres have a real shot at seeing their names etched onto the side of the Stanley Cup.

Ask Brent if he could have imagined such a scenario back when he and Matthew drove from small-town Aylmer, Quebec, to the Maurice Richard Arena in Montreal for the 1990 Quebec Major Junior Hockey League draft. Matthew, 17, was expecting to be a seventh- or eighth-round pick. By Round 15, his name had not been called. In tears, he told his brother it was time to leave. Brent joked, "You'll probably be the last player picked."

The 240th and last player picked, by Beauport in the 20th round, was Matthew Barnaby. Alain Chainey, the coach at Beauport, met Barnaby at the team's rink and took him for a ride to nearby Quebec City. Forgive the coach for thinking Barnaby -- small (5-foot-8), scrawny (140 pounds), unremarkable -- was wasting his time. But Chainey remembers the drive and what Barnaby said: "You won't be able to cut me."

On the first day of training camp, what Barnaby noticed most was that all the other players were bigger and better than he was. But he also remembered the lumberyard back home. In the next two days, he got into more than a dozen fights, refusing to back down to anyone. Chainey had 20 spots on his roster. He decided that Barnaby was worth making room for 21.

Ice time was precious. He had no regular shift. What else could he do but make the most of any chance he got? In 52 games, Barnaby had 14 points, 262 penalty minutes and a mile's worth of stitches. The payoff came the next season when Chainey named Barnaby assistant captain. Barnaby repaid his coach with 29 goals, 66 points and 476 penalty minutes. Soon, NHL scouts were watching.

"There are very few guys in junior hockey who can change the course of a game with a hit or a physical play," says Larry Carriere, Buffalo's assistant general manager. "Barnaby could."

So this is the fairy tale part of the story: The little man who couldn't, becomes the people's choice on the ice. Sure enough, he's drafted 83rd overall in the fourth round by the Sabres in 1992, and the fans love his energy and relentlessness, the way he dives for loose pucks and goes into the corners face-first.

He's playful with the crowd, nasty with opponents. In his rookie season, he racks up 106 penalty minutes in 35 games; the next year, he piles up 116 in just 23 games. By 1995-96, he posts a league-leading 335 penalty minutes in 73 games and becomes the Sabres' emotional leader.

Big opponents hate him because they're bullies if they run him but chumps if he runs them. Barnaby knows that and plays it, rubs it in a little too much sometimes. But his physical play is earning him some open ice. He scored 15 goals in 1995-96 and 19 in '96-97. He became a pretty valuable player -- a guy capable of scoring 20 or more goals and taking your big guy off the ice in a trade of penalties. Pros refer to players who do that as "Ratf -- ers."

But the cold world of pro hockey is not designed for a simple man like Barnaby, for whom loyalty is a religion. Barnaby had fallen hard for Buffalo coach Ted Nolan, a man who loves overachievers who bleed for their team. When Hasek, the all-world goalie, got into a public feud with Nolan after last season's playoffs -- part of a series of events that ended with both Nolan and GM John Muckler getting canned -- Barnaby was beside himself.

In his world, you don't turn on family. When he was younger, his parents divorced and his father left home. Later, when his father contacted him to try to re-enter his life, Barnaby backed away.

"He's approached me a couple of times, but I've always kept it very short," Barnaby says. "I felt like it would've been a slap in the face to my mother and brother who raised me so well. Brent always has been a father to me. And a brother. And a best friend. He was the best man at my wedding."

Barnaby's notion of loyalty was formed early and is steeped in emotion. So when Hasek trashed Nolan in public, Barnaby felt he was right to do what he did -- which was threaten to run Hasek in training camp.

"Teddy showed a lot of confidence in Matthew," says friend and teammate Rob Ray. "He really helped Matthew find a place for himself in the NHL. Matthew was recently married. He had a baby on the way. He had a full plate."

As this season began, the fans sided with Barnaby and booed Hasek for his role in Nolan's firing, but Barnaby did not confront the goalie. Instead, Barnaby's game disappeared. With his mentor gone and a new family to worry about, he skated as if he were carrying the burdens of the world, scoring just three goals in the team's first 68 games.

By March, Barnaby was asking to be traded from the only NHL team he'd ever known, a team that shared a hometown with his wife, Christine, now seven months pregnant. The fairy tale took a sharp turn into Stephen King territory.

"Things had weighed on my mind for four or five months," Barnaby says. "Finally, I just felt asking for the trade was something I had to do."

First-year general manager Darcy Regier told Barnaby he would listen to any offers, but he said he would not make a deal unless it made sense for the team. In other words, no promises. On March 23, one day before the league's trading deadline, Barnaby packed his bags for a four-game road trip to Calgary, Vancouver, Edmonton and Detroit. Barnaby overpacked for the trip, figuring he might be changing teams on the fly. "I told the guys I packed my big-screen TV."

On deadline day, at the team's morning skate before its game with the Flames, Barnaby saw Calgary general manager Al Coates, who kidded him and said he had a locker stall all ready. The Flames were among the teams interested in him, and Barnaby feared he might be playing that night against his beloved Sabres.

After practice, Barnaby showered, dressed and headed for the Sabres' bus, all the while waiting for the call. He joined the team meal at the hotel. He went to his room, called Christine and his agent, Larry Kelly. Reporters started calling him. Finally, at 1:10 p.m., head coach Lindy Ruff asked to see him. Ruff and Regier told Barnaby he wasn't going anywhere.

"They told me they couldn't find a deal that would benefit the club," Barnaby says. "They wanted to know if I still wanted to play." He thought about his mother's sacrifices, how his brother would get up at 4:30 a.m., rain or shine, summer or winter, to go to work in that lumberyard. "They sacrificed and did without so I could play hockey," Barnaby says. "There were times when Brent went hungry so I could have new sticks." Right there, in Ruff's hotel room, Barnaby made a decision to rededicate himself.

"I decided it was time to move forward, to stop sulking and get back to playing hockey," he says. The feeling was mutual. "The coaching staff never gave up on Matthew," Regier says, "so I didn't have to trade him." Three days later, after a 1-0 win in Edmonton, a bunch of Sabres were in a local bar. The joint was crowded and heads turned to see Hasek, the gold medal winner in the Olympics. Several teammates circled Hasek to deflect the crush of well-wishers. Barnaby, who hadn't said much more than "hi" or "bye" to Hasek since the summer, was one of them. As the evening went on, Hasek offered to buy Barnaby a beer. The two men talked.

"We just told each other we were teammates and we have to put it behind us," Barnaby says. "It wasn't an awkward moment at all. We even joked about a lot of things. There were no apologies from either one of us. Since then, he's been great."

And Buffalo has been a contender. Hasek is the horse that carries the Sabres. But Barnaby's rebirth helped raise Buffalo from being just a dangerous team to a potential Cup winner. "He has the uncanny ability to sense when things aren't going well and to do something about it," says Nolan (waiting for his next coaching job) of Barnaby, who's now six feet and 188 pounds. "You don't want to go to battle without a guy like Matthew. Some guys, you look in their eyes and you see they're bluffing. Matthew has no fear."

Nolan's successor behind the bench agrees. "Matthew can spark the team at any time," says Ruff. "He laughs at fear. Even if a guy is 6-foot-6, he never backs down." Still the people's choice, Barnaby flirts with Sabres fans during games, makes eye contact with them and acknowledges their applause by lifting his hands to "raise the roof" after being selected a star of the game. They love him for it. "Matthew likes to give people their money's worth," Brent says, after watching his brother's team beat Montreal in the playoffs, and then watching him taunt the Molson Centre crowd. "He likes to put on a show."

Barnaby is living a beautiful story right now. He scored a hat trick in a win over the Canadiens on Mother's Day with his mom in attendance. Some fans cried when they saw him looking for her in the stands afterward. Are you surprised to learn that Barnaby bought his mother a new house? Or that Brent still works in the lumberyard, but that he drives there in a new four-wheel-drive vehicle? On May 2, Christine gave birth to Matthew Joseph Thomas Barnaby Jr.

And there's still the on-ice part of the story. Barnaby's Sabres are eight wins away from a Cup -- and he's a major reason why. Next up are the Washington Capitals. Maybe Barnaby stirs it up with Esa Tikkanen, a classic pest. Maybe he runs Peter Bondra, neutralizing one of the game's great scorers. Certainly, Barnaby will make his presence felt.

He is not the greatest hockey player in the world. He is not the greatest hockey player on his team. It has never been easy for him. But he has his mom and his brother and his wife and a new baby boy. And there is that lumberyard. Matthew Barnaby says he is a grateful man.