I knew Ken Dryden, but not very well. I’ve been a little bit surprised by how the news of his death has affected me. As I said to someone on Facebook recently, we (I) am now at an age where the heroes of our youth are passing away. It’s a sad reminder of how quickly life goes.

Ken became (and remained) good friends with my NHL publishing boss Dan Diamond during Ken’s time as president of the Toronto Maple Leafs from 1997 to 2004. We at Dan Diamond and Associates did a lot of work with Ken when the Maple Leafs were moving from the Gardens to the Air Canada Centre. Dan also worked with Ken during his political career and we were all at the event at Ken’s old elementary school in 2006 when Ken announced he was running for the Liberal leadership.

I met Ken a handful of times over the years, when he would attend parties Dan held either at home or for the office. In more recent years, I would sometimes call or email him if I wanted advice or an opinion for something I was working on. He was usually quite accommodating. The last time he and I talked was in early May. His voice sounded raspy, and he said he hadn’t been well, but he gave no indication of anything worse than that. Ken had called me about my interest in something an old friend had come to him with. I was a little surprised it wasn’t something he wanted to get involved with himself … but, I guess, we now know why.

When Ken called in May, I took the opportunity to ask him something for a book I’m working on that I hadn’t previously because (more big name drops!) I had already been in touch with Scotty Bowman and Dick Irvin about it. My question was, did he remember anyone referring to the line of Guy Lafleur, Steve Shutt and either Pete Mahovlich or Jacques Lemaire as The Dynasty Line during the Canadiens’ 1970s Stanley Cup Dynasty. Like Bowman and Irvin, Ken had never heard that term. Ken said something along the lines of “it would have been silly to call them that then.” Then I quoted him something from an Al Strachan article in the Montreal Gazette from the 1975–76 season. Pierre Bouchard had apparently dubbed the line of Lafleur, Shutt and Mahovlich The Donut Line as a shot at Mahovlich, “because the line had no center.” Shutt responded by saying Mahovlich called them The Helicopter Line “because they had no wings.” Ken laughed and said, “that sounds like Shutty!”

Ken was always very approachable and I remember at our office Christmas party in 2002 mentioning that I had recently watched the DVD of all the games of the 1972 Canada-Russia series, which had come out around then. He told me he’d never seen it and that he didn’t like to watch any old footage of his games, which I’ve read again recently in various memories of him. (I do believe he finally re-watched the 1972 games for his 2022 book on the 50th anniversary of the series.) He was pleased when I told him the intensity and skill displayed in the series still held up, and then I screwed up my courage to ask him something I’d long wondered about. How come he, and some of the other players, who had spent time with the Canadian National Team hadn’t been able to convince their Team Canada teammates how good the Soviets really were? Ken said something along the lines of, “I just thought NHL players were that much better.”

One thing I never had the guts to tell Ken was how much I didn’t like him when I was a boy! In truth, I did like him at first. Like most people, I became aware of him during the 1971 playoffs when — though not yet even officially considered an NHL rookie — he led the Canadiens to that huge upset of the Bruins and then all the way to a Stanley Cup championship. Of course, I was seven years old at the time, and I can’t really say anymore how much I actually remember versus how much I now know. And, of course, there was his role in the 1972 series. But by the time I was 12 years old, the Leafs had Darryl Sittler, Lanny McDonald, Borje Salming et al and I was hooked on my hometown team.

I was barely 13 when Mike Palmateer became the Leafs goalie, and I was way more into him that I was into Ken Dryden! The two playoff losses to the Canadiens in 1978 and 1979 didn’t help … but, I’m sure, had I told Ken that young me had hated him, he wouldn’t mind. He was a sports fan above all and would have understood childhood loyalty. After all, he had that quote about the best era of the game being “whenever you were 12 years old.” (Though you sometimes see the age recorded as young as 10 or 11.)

I’ll conclude this with an email/phone conversation I had with Ken back in 2010. This was regarding some early work that would lead towards my Stanley Cup books for Firefly in 2013 and 2018. I’ll begin with an except from my email to him, and then my notes based on our phone conversation.

Dear Ken,

The best of the season to you and Lynda and your family. I hope you are all well … and that you will have a few minutes to spare over the holidays to think about this question I have for you…

When I first started pitching [my Stanley Cup history book] to a few publishers, I got a lot of responses along the lines of “this is a great book that somebody should do” but no commitment to take it on, or, worse yet, “hockey fans don’t like history, and history buffs don’t like sports.” Well, as one hockey fan who loves the history of both the game and his country, I think they’re wrong!

Though I’m honestly not sure how I’d fit it into the narrative as I’d like to do it, I have been asked to consider adding some sort of “what my Stanley Cup win meant to me” angle … and so I am wondering what sort of connection, if any, the players I grew up watching or the ones playing now have to the history of the Stanley Cup.

When you won, either for the first time in 1971, or as part of the “dynasty” later in the decade, or when you first saw your name engraved on the trophy, did you personally feel any kind of connection to the history of the game? Or, if not at the time, do you look back on your Stanley Cup wins now as something that will forever make you a part of hockey history? Do you think other players have felt this? Is this an angle at all worth pursuing in a book about the early history of the Stanley Cup?

A response by email is certainly sufficient, but if this is something you’d be at all interested in talking about in any more depth, please feel free to call me at home.

Thanks, Eric

Notes from Ken’s phone call:

Unreal feeling joining the Canadiens … like, “if this is the real Canadiens, why am I here?”

Even more of a disconnect in the playoffs. “If this is the real Stanley Cup … Conn Smythe Trophy … then why am I winning it?”

Being in the NHL didn’t really hit him until coming home after game seven in the first round against Boston and there were big crowds at the airport.

Didn’t feel a connection to history when they won. He never felt there was a quiet moment where you took a deep breath and thought, “this is what the Rocket did.”

Parades helped to make it feel real.

How each team got there was what really mattered, and the harder the journey the more rewarding.

Best was in 1976. “The quest.” He felt that he, and probably everyone, starting preparing for that as soon as they were eliminated from the playoffs in 1975. Thought about it all summer. Played Philly tough in the preseason (see Denault book), set the tone in regular-season games. “Felt like a full-season quest.”

As to history, Ken only had a very general awareness of the challenge history … and thought the NHL took over the Stanley Cup right way in 1918. Feels the seeds of the modern sport (all modern NA sport) where sowed in the 1920s. Probably due to radio. Created first media stars (Babe Ruth, Red Grange, Bobby Jones et al.)

Not sure any player feels the connection to history. Thinks modern players have been programmed to give the answer you’d want to hear (“I thought about my heroes when I lifted the Cup…” but he doesn’t believe they really do). You’d really have to dig to get a thoughtful answer about what they really felt.