Books by Ken Dryden
The Game
Best Quote: “Nothing is as good as it used to be, and it never was. The “golden age of sports,” the golden age of anything, is the age of everyone’s childhood.”
Summary: The best sports book ever written. Ken Dryden’s first of many books is perhaps the most detailed insider look into the mid of a hockey player. Dryden’s first book takes the reader through his final year on the Canadians, the last year his team would win the Stanley Cup. But more than a memoir of his time on the ice, Dryden exposes the reader to the feelings of hockey players; what they think and why. Moreover, Dryden provides his broader philosophies of hockey and of life.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect to the book is the chapter on the rise of Soviet hockey. Dryden, who played for Team Canada in the 1972 Summit Series understood how the Soviets developed their own way of hockey separate from the Canadian way. This way included training, fitness, player development, and tactics.
Dryden would go onto a longer career in sportscasting, writing, and Canadian politics, further evidence that as an author, Dryden had an understanding of the game matched by few others, especially players during his era. Dryden observes in this season, the last of the Canadian dynasty of the 70s aging players, whose bodies are just as capable, but seem to lose some enthusiasm for the game. The body then follows the mind, and players who were once 30-goal scorers only net 20. Dryden sees how players more and more games are won, not by great plays, but by other’s mistakes, an remarkable insight that is relevant to nearly every sport, and from a military perspective, apt in war.
Dryden sees his fellow players, but also sees the insights of the greatest hockey coach, if not greatest coach in all of sports, Scotty Bowman. Bowman is reflective in his conversations with Dryden, and humble enough to say that his job comes simply comes down to making sure the right players are on the ice.
Scotty: A Hockey Life Like No Other
Best Quote: “difference is acceptable, if you’re good”
Summary: Ken Dryden provides a unique biography of perhaps the hockey’s greatest coach, Scotty Bowman. Dryden does this by walking the reader through Bowman’s life filled in with interviews of Scotty talking about the greatest hockey teams of all time, from the 70s Canadians to the 80s Islanders and Oilers, to the 90s/00s Red Wings to the 2010s Blackhawks. Bowman offers a unique perspective behind each of these teams. By chronicling these teams, Dryden and Bowman also provide a history of the evolution of hockey.
The Series: What I Remember, What It Felt Like, What It Feels Like Now
Best Quote: “In Montreal, we looked too old and too slow. We had too many players who were great with the puck and not enough who pushed and grinded and got us the puck.”
Summary: Ken Dryden served as one of two goaltenders for team Canada in the 1972 Summit Series. This selection came after his breakthrough performance in leading the Montreal Canadians to the Stanley Cup in 1971 (a feat accomplished without playing enough games in the regular season to qualify for rookie of the year). In the Series, Dryden tells the story of each game through his unique lens and writing style. Dryden describes his time in the Soviet Union, and what he perceived as dirty tricks by the Soviets to throw him and his team off their game. Moreover, Dryden uses the book to expand on his thoughts on the evolution of hockey, and how the Soviets beginning in this series influenced the North American game.
Game Change: The Life and Death of Steve Montador, and the Future of Hockey
Best Quote: “It might seem that the toughest guys are those who deliver the biggest hits, with a shoulder or a fist. But the toughest guys are really those who are willing to take the biggest hits”
Summary: Steve Montador died in 2015. An examination of his brain following his death led to a diagnosis of CTE, a condition we increasingly find in football players and other athletes who suffer repeated blows to the head. Dryden uses Montador’s story, his career arc as the background in examining the evolution of the game, and the intersection of modern science, medicine, and sports. Dryden does a deep dive into the impacts of concussions and offers perspectives of ways hockey can evolve and become a better, safer game.
Home Game: Hockey Life in Canada by Ken Dryden and Roy MacGregor
Best Quote: The Koehlers, like many others feel little sense of community where they live, even where they work. They have found their community in a hockey rink.
Summary: This book looks at hockey’s role in shaping Canadian identity. Dryden and MacGregor, perhaps the best authors on Hockey and Canada respectively, look at hockey culture in Canada from rural rinks to games at the junior and professional level.