Ken Dryden was always an outlier. A mountain of a man between the pipes, standing 6’4″, famously leaning on the butt of his stick, with pads that look so small on his lanky frame that he gives off a road hockey vibe. When he broke into the NHL in 1970-71, only one skater in the NHL was listed above Dryden’s own height, his teammate Peter Mahovlich.
Like his stature in an era where 10 of the 15 most played goalies in the league were under six feet tall, Dryden’s entire career is exceptional. Any time you’re talking all-time greats, Dryden’s name will come up, but always with asterisks.
I always liked to think that Dryden himself loved it that way, because his career wasn’t just an unrepeatable-but-short era of dominance that can never be matched, it is defined that way because he chose to approach his career differently.
He burst onto the scene in 1971 with a Montreal Canadiens squad stacked with future Hockey Hall of Fame inductees, but many considered too old, or too young, to be a prime-age competitive team. It’s ludicrous when you look back at the names on that roster to think that they were considered a transition team, but this was a Canadiens era in which they won nine Stanley Cups over 13 years before the calendar flipped to the 1970s.
Inspiring performances from Dryden were the key to a first-round upset of the heavily favoured, first-place Boston Bruins featuring Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito at their peaks. As if to cement the magic, Dryden had to out-duel Tony Esposito, a former Canadiens prospect, in the Stanley Cup Final against the Chicago Blackhawks. Dryden skated away with the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player in the playoffs, and more importantly the Stanley Cup.
Over the next two seasons, he won the Calder Memorial Trophy as the NHL’s rookie of the year, represented Canada at the 1972 Summit Series between Canada and the Soviet Union, won his first Vezina Trophy, and another Stanley Cup.
Then, he decided he was going to finish his law degree and take a year off from hockey.
Blazing a new trail
A resurgent Canadiens squad on the brink of another dynasty loses their starting goaltender, and they pull together a strong regular season, but goaltending isn’t consistent, and they lose in the first round to the Rangers.
While things may have been handled professionally, how pissed off do you think the Canadiens brass was behind the scenes? How angry do you think the fanbase got every time a weak goal went in that they believed Dryden would have stopped? Meanwhile, he was in Toronto, articling for a law firm.
Made even worse, Dryden’s first year back was the worst of his career. The Canadiens were buoyed by the emergence of Guy Lafleur, but still went out in the semifinals to the Buffalo Sabres. Can you imagine a player in the modern NHL doing this? What do you think the media coverage would look like?
A sport’s most storied club falling out of a dynasty brings in a franchise-altering talent leading to two championships, he takes a year off, and comes back average. Poised for another dynasty, there’s now uncertainty. Knowing the ending takes so much away from the drama of those years.
Dryden made up for it by winning the next four Vezina Trophies as the league’s best goaltender, and backstopping the Canadiens to four straight Stanley Cups. Then at the young age of 31, he retired.
The Game
From writing what many consider the hockey book, to commentating on the game, Dryden maintained a presence in hockey before being hired as president of the flailing Toronto Maple Leafs in 1997, which he helped bring back into competitive relevance in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
A Canadiens legend helping to rebuild the hated Maple Leafs, how well do you think that played in Montreal? And then he follows it up with a career as a Liberal politician.
He spent his career making unpopular choices. Whether it was where he was working, or his commentary on the needs of the sport, prioritizing safety, better treatment of officials, taking concussions seriously, increasing goal-scoring, and more. He regularly proposed bold solutions, and wasn’t always right.
Many will write about his Hall of Fame career, his willingness to stand on his convictions, and his gifts as an orator, but I think the pattern is more important than the pieces.
It’s easy to look backward with admiration at his decision to finish his law degree instead of playing in the NHL in 1973 romantically, but in truth it was a contract dispute between the Canadiens and Dryden that forced the issue. Remember in 2019 with Mitch Marner’s agent threatened a contract holdout where Marner would play hockey in Europe? Imagine the reaction if Marner said he wasn’t going to play at all for a year.
Whether it’s holding out for a new contract, writing columns about protecting players from head injuries, or writing books about Canada’s education system, Dryden looked at the world around him and thought, “This can be better,” and he sought to improve it.
He worked with Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen organization, he attempted to build an Ontario Public Interest Research Group to find ways to improve people’s lives most effectively, he spoke of his Soviet opponents as people instead of enemies, even at the height of the Cold War.
I’ve heard Dryden referred to as hockey’s conscience, but I think that sells him short. At every turn, he showed us he was more than one thing, as we all are. At his core though, he cared more about improving things than conforming.
A lawyer he may have been, but Ken Dryden was a rule-breaker. We should all strive to be more like him.
Andrew Berkshire is the former managing editor of Eyes on the Prize, and the founder of Game Over Network Inc. A Canadian, employee-owned sports media startup focused on platforming young creators across the country. Find Andrew live on YouTube after Habs games with Game Over Montreal, where you can also find Marc Dumont, Kay Imam, and Conor Tomalty to bring you interactive postgame analysis. You can join the Game Over Network’s Discord, and support us on Patreon as we employ over 30 young sports journalists and analysts across Canada’s seven NHL markets.
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