Ken Dryden is recognized during a pre-game ceremony to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Team Canada’s victory in the 1972 Summit Series, in Toronto, in September, 2022.Nick Iwanyshyn/The Canadian Press
Ken Dryden would plant the toe of his goalie stick in the ice, resting his leather-clad right blocker hand and left catching hand atop the taped knob as a rest for his chin. He was a sentry temporarily at ease, looking no more bothered than a streetsweeper waiting for traffic to pass.
For some, the pose evoked Rodin’s The Thinker, as though the goalie needed a respite from the frantic action. In the 1970s, it was not uncommon to see a kids’ road hockey game in which both goalies struck the stance.
Such coolness under fire for one of hockey’s greatest goaltenders also served him well in off-ice careers as a lawyer, author, educator, broadcaster, hockey executive, Ontario youth commissioner, member of Parliament and federal cabinet minister.
Montreal Canadiens goalie Ken Dryden leans on his stick, striking a characteristic pose during a pause in play in October, 1972.FILE/The Canadian Press
A circumspect speaker, Mr. Dryden was a graceful and thoughtful presence in public life for more than a half-century.
His unexpected death at age 78 brought tributes from Prime Minister Mark Carney (“my favourite goalie”), Governor-General Mary Simon (“quiet but powerful empathy”), Montreal Canadiens owner Geoff Molson (“a family man, a thoughtful citizen, and a gentleman”), teammates (“Ken always gave us a chance to win,” Yvan Cournoyer told hockey historian Dave Stubbs) and rivals (“a giant both in hockey and in life,” according to the Los Angeles Kings).
Hundreds if not thousands of other Canadians shared on social media their photographs, juvenile drawings and other paraphernalia along with anecdotes about meeting a man considered a role model by many. He eagerly signed autographs for children but was more wary with adults, insisting on personalizing an item to limit its later resale value.
Mr. Dryden won the Stanley Cup six times in eight seasons with the Canadiens. He retired as a player at age 31 after winning four championships in a row. The storied Montreal franchise has won just two Stanley Cups in the subsequent 46 seasons.
The goaltender enjoyed one of the most astonishing debuts in hockey history. The unheralded player was called up by Montreal late in the 1970-71 season. He wore sweater No. 29, a number indicating a backup goalie’s backup. After just six regular-season games in the National Hockey League, all of which he won, Mr. Dryden was tapped as the team’s playoff goalie. The Canadiens, who had had a mediocre season by their standards, eliminated the defending champion Boston Bruins in seven games, the Minnesota North Stars in six games, and the Chicago Black Hawks (now Blackhawks) in seven games to claim the Stanley Cup.
Cathal Kelly: Ken Dryden was a national hero. Now that he’s gone, he has no replacement
At 6-foot-4 (193 centimetres) and 205 pounds (93 kilograms), Mr. Dryden was a tall, gangly figure who seemed all limbs. He frustrated top scorers with saves that remain indelible in memory decades later. Boston’s Phil Esposito complained about a “thieving giraffe” after being robbed of a certain goal, smashing his stick against the glass behind the net in frustration.
In the third period of Game 7 of the finals, Chicago’s Jim Pappin got a rebound with a wide-open net in front of him. He wristed the puck toward the corner, raising his arms in celebration, only to have Mr. Dryden’s padded right leg dart out to block the shot. The save seemed to sap the team’s fighting spirit, as Chicago skaters could but wonder what sorcery had stopped the puck from going in.
Mr. Dryden was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player, winning $1,500 and a car. Remarkably, he had won an individual trophy and a Stanley Cup championship before ever having lost a regular-season game. He would go on to win the Calder Trophy as the league’s top rookie the following season.
In the legendary 1972 Summit Series against the Soviet Union, Mr. Dryden was in goal when Canada stormed from behind to win the pivotal Game 8 in Moscow. After Paul Henderson slipped a puck past Vladislav Tretiak with less than a minute left on the clock, Mr. Dryden raced the length of the ice to join in the celebration, only to realize he had to collect himself and gather his focus for the final 34 seconds of play.
Ken Dryden was in goal when Canada won the pivotal Game 8 of the 1972 Summit Series against the Soviet Union in Moscow.STF/The Canadian Press
Three years later, Mr. Dryden was in goal for the Canadiens in a 3-3 draw against Mr. Tretiak and the Central Red Army in an exhibition played in Montreal on New Year’s Eve in 1975, considered by some to be the greatest game ever played.
Away from the ice, Mr. Dryden was a passionate advocate for education. He compared teaching to being a goaltender, a position where a good, bad or indifferent performance affects the outcome every day, while a lawyer or an accountant, like a forward or a defenceman, must be a star to have an impact.
“Teaching is a passing on, an act of future,” he told convocation at York University in 1996 while accepting an honorary degree. “The expert may expand the range of what is possible, but the teacher expands the range of who can do the possible.”
Mr. Dryden was the epitome of the scholar-athlete. He gained a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., while backstopping the Big Red to a national championship in 1967. In an 81-game varsity career, he won 76 games with one tie.
While playing for Canada’s amateur national team, based in Winnipeg, he began law studies at the University of Manitoba, completing a law degree at McGill University in Montreal.
The young goalie dumbfounded teammates by showing up for practice at the Montreal Forum with a stack of books under his arm. The goaltender was a rare NHL player to hold a university degree at a time when most hailed from hard-scrabble mining and farming towns with little more than a high school education.
Mr. Dryden’s arrival also coincided with a time of social upheaval. In the wake of various movements for civil liberties, even hockey players were making demands for better compensation from wealthy owners.
Ken Dryden, legendary Canadiens goaltender, remembered for greatness on and off the ice
Ken Dryden, former Canadiens star goaltender, dies of cancer at age 78
The goaltender stunned the hockey world during a salary dispute by stepping away from the Canadiens for the 1973-74 season to article for a Toronto law firm.
He had earlier shown he was intent on being active in public life, working one summer with Ralph Nader as a so-called Nader Raider.
In those ways and others, he became a cultural touchstone, inspiring writers such as Pete McCormack, who uses the goalie as a fictional foil for a hockey-mad boy in the 1998 novel Understanding Ken, which was nominated for the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour.
As well, the published play script of Rick Salutin’s drama Les Canadiens, commissioned and first staged at the Centaur Theatre in Montreal in 1977, includes a preface by the goaltender who is credited on the cover with an “assist.”
Mr. Salutin repaid the favour by offering helpful suggestions to drafts of Mr. Dryden’s memoir of his final season. The Game was published to wide acclaim in 1983 and was a finalist for a Governor-General’s Literary Award for nonfiction. It is regarded as one of the greatest sports books of all time.
Mr. Dryden’s other notable hockey books include the 1989 bestseller Home Game, written with Roy MacGregor; Scotty, a biography of his coach, Scotty Bowman; and, Game Change, an examination of the dangers of head injuries told through the tragic story of Steve Montador.
Another national bestseller was The Class (2023), for which Mr. Dryden did a roll call on his 1960 classmates at suburban Etobicoke Collegiate Institute to see what paths they had followed.
Kenneth Wayne Dryden was born on Aug. 8, 1947, in Hamilton, Ont., the middle of three children born to the former Margaret Adelia Campbell, a kindergarten teacher, and David Murray Dryden, a door-to-door salesman. Ken was the middle child with an older brother, Dave, and a younger sister, Judy. After the family moved to suburban Toronto, the father spent $6.60 on chicken wire and two-by-fours to construct a hockey net. The senior Dryden later had the backyard paved so his boys could play ball hockey year long.
Both sons made the NHL as goalies, making league history on March 20, 1971, by facing one another. The Canadiens defeated the Buffalo Sabres by 5-2 at the Forum. The Drydens shook hands on the ice after the final whistle.
Flowers are laid at a plaque in honour of Ken Dryden outside Montreal’s Bell Centre on Sunday.Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press
He was originally a Boston draft pick as an amateur in 1964, but the Bruins traded his rights to Montreal three weeks later, a transaction of great future consequence which received no media attention at the time.
Mr. Dryden remarkably lost only 57 of the 397 regular season NHL games he played. His playoff record was 80 wins and 32 losses.
He won the Vezina Trophy five times as the league’s best goalie, sharing three of those with teammate Michel (Bunny) Larocque.
Mr. Dryden was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1983, his first year of eligibility. He was named an officer of the Order of Canada in 2012, and his many other honours and awards include induction into the Panthéon des Sports du Québec (2014), as well as Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame as an individual (1984) and as a member of Team Canada during the 1972 Summit Series (2005). His hometown Etobicoke Sports Hall of Fame honoured him in 1994, while he was enshrined in the Cornell Athletics Hall of Fame in the inaugural class of 1978. He received the Order of Hockey in Canada from the sport’s national governing body Hockey Canada in 2020.
In 2007, the Canadiens retired his No. 29 sweater. He also appeared on two commemorative postage stamps issued by Canada Post in 2015.
The former Canadiens player became president of the rival Toronto Maple Leafs in 1997, serving for six years, including two in which he was general manager.
Mr. Dryden was elected to the House of Commons as a Liberal in the York Centre riding in 2004. He won two re-elections before being defeated in 2011. He spent two years as federal minister of social development under Prime Minister Paul Martin, where he worked on a national childcare strategy.
A bid for the federal Liberal leadership in 2006 ended with his elimination on the second ballot after having won just five per cent of the vote.
When a life-size bronze replica of the goalie resting on his stick was removed from its original location in Montreal a few days after he lost his seat, Mr. Dryden quipped that he’d been a victim of “regime change.” The statue, cast in Italy by the artist Robin Bell, now stands in a park at the entrance to Raymond Bourque Arena in the Montreal borough of Saint-Laurent. Another statue of the goalie can be found at the entrance to the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.
Mr. Dryden died of cancer on Sept. 5, an announcement that shocked a hockey world unaware of his illness of two years. He leaves the former Lynda Leah Curran, his wife of 55 years, a Cornell graduate whom he married in Ithaca, N.Y. He also leaves their two children, Sarah and Michael, as well as grandchildren. He was predeceased by his brother, who died in 2022.
In his induction speech for the Hockey Hall of Fame, the goaltender sought to assure the audience his passion for the game was no less great than their own.
“I loved playing hockey,” he said. “I’m not sure how many of you know that. I know to some I seem the dilettante, picking up hockey as I would something else. Drop it for something else a few years later.
“I loved hockey in driveways and backyards, in streets and outdoor arenas,” he said, his voice breaking slightly. “I loved it in college, with the national team, and in the NHL. It’s a game I will never leave.”
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