Dryden weighs in on heavy expectations

AN UNMASKED MARVEL
Ken Dryden is a thoughtful voice about hockey and the people who play it

In eight seasons in a Canadiens sweater, the last line of defence on the club's 1970s dynasty, Ken Dryden won six Stanley Cups, the Conn Smythe as the playoffs' most valuable player, the Calder Trophy as the NHL's top rookie, and five times was a first-team all-star while earning that many Vezina trophies as the league's finest goaltender.

Since 1997, Dryden has been president of the Toronto Maple Leafs, and in the executive suites he is as he was in the Canadiens dressing room: a thoughtful, articulate voice about the game of hockey, and matters beyond it.

Twenty questions with the sweet-toothed Hall of Famer, lawyer and best-selling author who's a fan of Monty Python and can recite The Far Side comic strips with alarming accuracy:

1. Did you ever do anything crazy with the Stanley Cup?

No. You almost never got it in those days. Another thing not a tradition then was that, when the Cup was awarded on the ice, it wasn't passed from player to player.

"I never had a chance to put it above my head and be part of the parade around the ice. ...

I later hosted a TV special about the Stanley Cup. I wrote the narration as well, and at the end, I spoke about how, in fact, I'd not had a chance to hold it up.

(Laughs) I said: "And now, here's this Cup right here, and I'm taking my chance."

2. Are you ever heckled by fans of the arch-rival Maple Leafs or Canadiens for your association with either club?

Yes. Less so by Montreal fans about my association with Toronto. It's: "How could you?!" That doesn't surprise me entirely. The other team is the great rival. What I say, and what I most strongly feel, is that they're the two most similar teams to each other in the league. They have the same kind of history, the same intense following locally and across the country. The team matters the most in the two cities of any teams anywhere. I say to people, "If you like one, you'll like the other."

3. Do you still find yourself watching an NHL game as a former goaltender?

Less than I would have thought. One of the things that I found surprising and almost disturbing was watching a game the year after I stopped playing and how, almost immediately, I couldn't watch as a former player. It was as if I was watching a world that I hadn't been a part of.

It was almost as if the guy who was wearing the Canadiens jersey was never me. Most of my life, the person in that jersey wasn't me ... it hadn't been me before 1971, or wasn't after I retired. It was the guy on television. That was the real Canadiens goaltender.

4. In practice, whose shot did you least like to face?

Early on, (Yvan) Cournoyer. Not just because he shot hard, but because his shot was at least a little out of control. That's the dangerous guy, not necessarily the guy who shoots hardest. Later on it was Mario Tremblay and Dougie Risebrough. Again, they didn't have the hardest shots, but they always seemed to put it off your arms or shoulders, where we were the least protected.

5. Seventeen Canadiens players have worn your No. 29 since you retired. How many can you name?

(Pauses) Uh ... Gino Odjick.

6. Your pads never seemed big enough. Do you envy today's goaltenders for their bulletproof equipment?

Envy isn't the right word. The same question could have been asked of Georges Vezina about us - about our big catching gloves and padding on our upper bodies, and a blocker that in fact had fibre in it so that it might (laughs) actually eliminate some of the pain.

Today the goalie is by far the best protected guy on the ice, and the least injured. The goalie can play without fear. It changes the way you play, without any compromise for safety, completely focused on performance. That was never the case for me.

It's only when you have equipment like goalies have now, and you see the changes in the style, that you realize what a compromise it was to be a stand-up goalie. We understood that (stand-up) was the best way to play. Well, no, it actually isn't.

7. Your first mask was unlike any seen in the NHL, before or since. Do you still have it?

I think I do, somewhere.

It was made in Montreal, a fair amount like the Jacques Plante mask. I hadn't worn one before going to Cornell. That was part of the (mandatory) equipment at university. In September of my first year, a mold was made and that was the mask they sent back. (Laughs) The only input I had in its design was providing my face for the mold. I wore it at Cornell, one year with the national team, then in Montreal my first couple of years.

That was the only mask I had. If it had been lost, I'm not sure what I would have done.

8. Who was your favourite Beatle, and why?

I don't have an immediate answer the way others might. I liked Ringo's name, and his odd eyes. I liked John Lennon's voice. Paul McCartney's hair moved the right way. George Harrison? I didn't notice him very much.

9. What's the most important thing in your briefcase?

Probably my most recent legal pad, the one that I'm working with. The rest of the stuff I might not even notice for a couple of months.

10. Do you have a favourite scene in the movie Slap Shot?

(Laughs, then pauses) You see scenes on arena videoboards, and you end up remembering those, not a lot of the others. Probably the scene with the Hansons in their hotel room, playing with their slot cars.

11. What's the funniest comic strip of all time?

Probably The Far Side. I enjoy Gary Larson's slightly off-centre take on the world, seeing it straight on - with a little twist. That's the reason Monty Python is my favourite comedy series, too. (Starts laughing) I remember a Far Side strip with one deer talking to another. One has a bull's-eye on his chest and the other is saying, "Bummer of a birthmark, Hal."

12. Which golf club in your bag are you most likely to throw into the lake?

Either my 9-iron or my putter. (Laughs) Every putt to me looks like it's going to break from right to left, even if it breaks from left to right. I feel I can read a green when I stand back from the ball, but when I stand over it and look toward the hole, my world tilts.

13. What's your guiltiest food pleasure?

Probably ice cream. Always chocolate. The thing that's become a celebration for me, when I feel I've earned a special treat, is a chocolate milkshake. I'll go searching for a Dairy Queen. It can be for little things - the end of a good day on a book tour, or after a speech has gone well.

And cheeseburgers. There's nothing better than going to The Senator, a restaurant in Toronto, for a chocolate milkshake and a cheeseburger.

14. If you could invite one goalie, from any era, to talk shop over this burger and 'shake, who would it be?

Georges Vezina, to know what it was like. I was going to say Glenn Hall, because I like him a lot and I like the way he played, but I'd recognize his time, which was more connected to mine.

But for Vezina, what was it like when there wasn't a forward pass? What happened when it came in? What did players shoot like? What did it feel like with the padding you had? You blocked most of the shots in what way, what move would you make? Why was it hard to stop the great stars of the time?

That is a time there would be lots of surprises, lots of things you wouldn't naturally think about because you hadn't experienced anything close to it.

15. How many Ken Dryden hockey cards do you own?

Somewhere in a box, I have all of my cards that were put out. When I retired, the company that did them sent me one of each. I collected cards as a boy, hockey and baseball. And I collected specialty cards, out of the U.S., (of) famous people. Included among them were statesmen, inventors and war heroes.

I remember having a Mickey Mantle baseball card. And a Virgil Trucks card. He had two no-hitters for the Detroit Tigers, but his name was so interesting for a 7-year-old. And there was Sibby Sisti. I thought that was a fantastic name, too.

16. Would we find more Canadiens or Leafs memorabilia in the Dryden home?

There's more Canadiens stuff, but it's all put away. You receive more as a player, and that's also more of a collecting time. You tend to keep more of it, and as you get older, you realize, "What am I going to do with this?"

We get so many commemorative things that are too good not to keep, but there's no place to put them. What do you do with stuff of yourself? I have this incredibly beautiful maquette of a sculpture that's been done of me (the lifesize bronze sculpture is in the Place Vertu shopping mall), but what do you do with it?

I'm happy I have these things and that I know where they are, but I don't need to see them.

17. One souvenir you do not have is the last puck from your last NHL game, the 1979 Stanley Cup victory - your only Cup won on Forum ice - and it was even in your glove at the final siren. How did linesman Matt Pavelich wind up with it?

Matt and I will see each other once a year and we still talk about "our puck" (laughs). We have a survivor's understanding - if he survives me, he gets the puck; if I survive him, I get it.

It was not without some anguish that I gave it to him. It was an unbelievably lucky moment - the puck is coming to me, shot along the boards, just as the game is ending. I know I'm going to be retiring, so it's perfect. I stop it, pick it up and all of a sudden, Matt is right there, and he has the same thing in mind.

"Ken, Ken ... can I have the puck? It's my last game!" he tells me. I say, "But it's mine, too!"

Matt had been a linesman a lot longer than I had been a goalie. It seemed right that he have it.

18. Of your thousands of saves, which was the greatest, and how do you remember it?

The one on Jim Pappin (an astonishing stop in Game 7 of the 1971 Stanley Cup final in Chicago that sealed the Canadiens' victory over the Black Hawks).

It was 3-2 at the time with about four minutes to play. Chicago had the puck behind our net and passed it in front. For some reason, (Chicago defenceman) Keith Magnusen was in the slot, which seems odd to me in that he was not an offensive player at all. Why he found himself there, I'm not sure. His shot went right at me, along the ice, and it hit my stick and deflected out to my right.

Literally between the moment he took the shot and the moment I stopped it, I knew I'd have to make the save and already be moving to stop the rebound. Usually they're separate and discreet, but this was one movement, where the first part of the save was blocking Magnusen's shot and the second part was throwing out my right leg for what I knew had to come next.

The puck deflected out to Jim Pappin, but I was already in the process of moving to stop his shot before he had taken it. He shot it into my leg.

What I remember, vividly, was the strangled sound, first of "Yaaaayy ..." and seeing his arms start to go up in the air - and then his arms and voice stop.

It seems to me there was some moment (later) that Jim and I were together, with someone else, and he made a passing comment like: "I've had to talk about that shot and that save all my life." And he laughed.

19. Did you get rich with endorsements?

I think the only one I ever did was for Sher-Wood, the sticks I used and was going to use. They paid me maybe $5,000 per season.

20. Well, the game has treated you well. On what did you spend your first hockey-earned dollar?

(Laughs, for 15 seconds) There are a few ungenerous people, and I'm sure Red Fisher is one of them, who would say that this question is yet to have an answer.

Ken Dryden wearing his famous pretzel mask. In 2003, he figured he still had it around the house somewhere.
Denis Brodeur, NHLI via Getty Images