O-Pee-Chee/Hockey Hall of Fame Frank Prazak/Hockey Hall of Fame PRAISE FOR THE GAME “A first-rate discussion of hockey by one of hockey’s first-rate players and first-rate minds …. Essential reading for anyone serious about hockey as an important part of Canadian life.” —Hamilton Spectator “The Game is a beautifully written, insightful, perceptive, revealing look at hockey.” —Toronto Star “We always wondered what he was thinking about whenever the play stopped and he struck his characteristic pose resting his chin on his goal stick. Now we know. He was composing one of the best hockey books ever written …. There is a ‘you are there’ quality to the prose as the author-goalie lets you see everything through his eyes, spicing his vivid descriptions with personal reflections and observations …. The Game succeeds both as an inside look at hockey and a portrait of an articulate athlete who knew when to quit.” —Winnipeg Free Press “The Game is a brilliant adventure into ourselves. It makes all other books about the sport look preliminary.” —Calgary Herald “A book about Ken Dryden, about Quebec, about the rest of Canada, and most of all, a loving book about a special sport.” —New York Times “The best Canadian sports book in years.” —Calgary Sun “An incredible memoir, a poetic journey through the life of Les Canadiens. It rises above being just a book about hockey. It’s a book about people, the fragile, delicate moments on the edge of fame and glory, failure and disillusionment. Dryden’s The Game is the complete hockey book.” —Windsor Star “As Dryden reminisces, we are presented with a portrait, in broad and vivid strokes, of the players who comprised the best team in professional hockey…. All the ingredients of a winner.” —Victoria Times-Colonist “No one has ever delivered an account of our national sport as deep as this. On a scale of 1 to 10, give the guy his sweater number—29.” —Regina Leader-Post Cornell/Hockey Hall of Fame THE GAME Steve Babineau/Hockey Hall of Fame For Lynda, Sarah, and Michael Copyright © 1983, 1993, 1999, 2003, 2005 by Ken Dryden All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechan- ical without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying or other reprographic copying of any part of this book shall be direct- ed in writing to The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free, 1-800-893-5777 Care has been taken to trace ownership of copyright material contained in this book. The publishers will gladly receive any information that will enable them to rectify any reference or credit line in subsequent editions. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Dryden, Ken, 1947- The game / Ken Dryden. — 20th anniversary edition. Previously published under title: The game : a thoughtful and provocative look at a life in hockey. ISBN 0-470-83355-6 (bound).-ISBN 0-470-83584-2 (pbk.) 1. Dryden, Ken, 1947-. 2. Montreal Canadiens (Hockey team). 3. National Hockey League. 4. Hockey players—Canada—Biography. I. Title. GV848.5.D7A3 2003 796.962'092 C2003-904811-X Production Credits Cover & interior text design: Interrobang Graphic Design Inc. Front cover photo by Denis Brodeur Back cover photo courtesy of the Toronto Maple Leaf Hockey Club Special thanks to Phil Pritchard and the Hockey Hall of Fame Cover quote from Quill & Quire Printer: Tri-Graphic Printing Ltd. Printed in Canada 109876543 2 1 INTRODUCTION This book was lived and researched over twenty-five years, thought about consciously on and off for at least the last five of those years, and finally written. It began as a boxful of scrap paper—hotel stationery, backs of envelopes, torn pages from newspapers and maga- zines—random inspirations that came from sleepless postgame nights, from twenty-two miles of silent highway from home to the Forum and back (“When am I going to remember to put a pen in that glove com- partment?”), from games behind a peerless defense that often left me with nothing else to do. I was sure that, clipped together, filed, laid end-to-end, they would become a book. They did not. Like most mid- night thoughts, what I found in the morning looked disturbingly thin and incomplete, often contradictory, not at all the story that had seemed to me so different and untold. Yet each scrap would later become a useful trigger for recollections otherwise lost. It was a book I couldn’t have written while I played. It needed time. As it is with a game, I needed to wait for lifelong, career-long feelings to settle and sort themselves out. I needed to distance myself from things I had long since stopped seeing, to see them again. In the end, it turned out to be the kind of wonderful, awful, agonizing, bor- ing, thrilling time others have described writing to be. One of those things we call “an experience.” 2 the game There are many people responsible for this book, and to them I owe a great debt. To my parents, Murray and Margaret Dryden, who introduced me to a sporting life; to my brother, Dave, who showed me just how much fun it could be. To my early coaches—Ray Picard, Ross Johnstone, Fred Fess, Ken Pleasance, Ken Thom, Ned Harkness— who understood the game but never forgot the rest. And to my teammates then and now. It started out as my story, and became theirs. I hope I got it right. I also owe much to ever-patient typists and friends too numerous to mention here, but most especially to Don Coles, David Fisher, David Harrop, Art Kaminsky, Red Fisher, Alan Williams, Ed Burlingame, Doug Fisher and Rick French, who read the manuscript in its various stages and forms and made me believe they were as inter- ested in it as I was. The errors are mine; they may see as much of themselves in the rest as they wish. To Rick Salutin, for his special help and friendship. To Doug Gibson, for encouraging the project in the beginning, and being there all along the way. To Jon Segal, for mak- ing me finally understand that it was a story I was telling. And to Lynda, Sarah, and Michael. They made the bad days less bad, and the good days seem better. Without them, this book could not have been written. Ken Dryden Toronto, May 1983 MONDAY “The trouble with people like us who start so fast… is that we soon have no place left to go.” —Pomeroy in Joseph Heller’s Good as Gold “I leave before being left. I decide.” —Brigitte Bardot Montreal I hear something and stir, then squint open my eyes. The room is filled with the morning sun. Sarah, aged four, appears and quickly dis- appears, shuffling noisily from room to room in her snowsuit, looking for something, apparently with no success. Downstairs, in a whispered shout, my wife Lynda tells her to hurry up. I look at the clock in the alcove beside me. It is 8:51. I start to get up, then I hear Sarah going down the stairs. I yell goodbye to her, and she yells a reply. I lie back, close my eyes, but I don’t sleep. It has been a short, restless night, yet I feel wonderfully refreshed. The sun, the crisp white sheets, a quilt pulled up to my nose—I’m filled with an enormous sense of well-being and for several moments I don’t know why. Then I remember. The game, last night’s game in Buffalo. I must be tired—it’s less than four hours since I went to bed— but that can wait. I want to be awake, I want to lie in my bed and feel the feeling I earned last night, to wrap my covers around it, to gather it up and hold it, to feel all of it completely. It is the morning after a spe- cial night, and everything out of reach, out of mind, a few hours ago now seems possible again. An hour later, my ski jacket undone, I bound down the front steps two at a time as the mailman comes down the driveway. I smile at him, he hands me the mail, and smiles—he knows. I back the car 4 the game onto the street. Across the road, a neighbor carries in her garbage pails. I wave. She waves back and smiles—she knows. I drive along Highway 40 to the city, passing the few cars in sight, the weather cold and blustery, my window down, my elbow out, rock music screaming from my radio. The car turns off at Atwater and cuts through the late morning traffic. Stoplights blink amber, then red; the car stops. My head bobs from side to side at unseen passersby, my fingers drum out rhythms from the radio. The light changes and the car starts up. Past St. Catherine Street, past de Maisonneuve and Sherbrooke, moving as if by some mechanical memory of its own to the same street, the same parking spot, as every other day. I get out and walk, faster and faster, the air so crisp and cold it burns my lungs. I go to the bank. A teller turns and smiles—she knows. I go to a coffee shop, to a bookstore, to a newsstand, they all smile—they all know.