The Game PDF
Preview The Game
O-Pee-Chee/Hockey Hall of Fame Frank Prazak/Hockey Hall of Fame PRAISE FOR THE GAME “A first-rate discussion of hockey by one of hockey’s first-rate players and first-rate minds….Essential reading for anyone serious about hockey as an important part of Canadian life.” —Hamilton Spectator “The Game is a beautifully written, insightful, perceptive, revealing look at hockey.” —Toronto Star “We always wondered what he was thinking about whenever the play stopped and he struck his characteristic pose resting his chin on his goal stick.Now we know.He was composing one of the best hockey books ever written….There is a ‘you are there’quality to the prose as the author-goalie lets you see everything through his eyes, spicing his vivid descriptions with personal reflections and observations….The Game succeeds both as an inside look at hockey and a portrait of an articulate athlete who knew when to quit.” —Winnipeg Free Press “The Game is a brilliant adventure into ourselves.It makes all other books about the sport look preliminary.” —Calgary Herald “A book about Ken Dryden, about Quebec, about the rest of Canada, and most of all, a loving book about a special sport.” —New York Times “The best Canadian sports book in years.” —Calgary Sun “An incredible memoir, a poetic journey through the life of Les Canadiens.It rises above being just a book about hockey. It’s a book about people, the fragile, delicate moments on the edge of fame and glory, failure and disillusionment. Dryden’s The Game is the complete hockey book.” —Windsor Star “As Dryden reminisces, we are presented with a portrait, in broad and vivid strokes, of the players who comprised the best team in professional hockey…. All the ingredients of a winner.” —Victoria Times-Colonist “No one has ever delivered an account of our national sport as deep as this.On a scale of 1 to 10, give the guy his sweater number—29.” —Regina Leader-Post Cornell/Hockey Hall of Fame THE GAME Steve Babineau/Hockey Hall of Fame For Lynda, Sarah, and Michael Copyright © 1983, 1993, 1999, 2003, 2005 by Ken Dryden All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechan- ical without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying or other reprographic copying of any part of this book shall be direct- ed in writing to The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free, 1-800-893-5777 Care has been taken to trace ownership of copyright material contained in this book. The publishers will gladly receive any information that will enable them to rectify any reference or credit line in subsequent editions. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Dryden, Ken, 1947- The game / Ken Dryden. — 20th anniversary edition. Previously published under title: The game : a thoughtful and provocative look at a life in hockey. ISBN 0-470-83355-6 (bound).-ISBN 0-470-83584-2 (pbk.) 1. Dryden, Ken, 1947-. 2. Montreal Canadiens (Hockey team). 3. National Hockey League. 4. Hockey players—Canada—Biography. I. Title. GV848.5.D7A3 2003 796.962'092 C2003-904811-X Production Credits Cover & interior text design: Interrobang Graphic Design Inc. Front cover photo by Denis Brodeur Back cover photo courtesy of the Toronto Maple Leaf Hockey Club Special thanks to Phil Pritchard and the Hockey Hall of Fame Cover quote from Quill & Quire Printer: Tri-Graphic Printing Ltd. Printed in Canada 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 INTRODUCTION This book was lived and researched over twenty-five years, thought about consciously on and off for at least the last five of those years, and finally written. It began as a boxful of scrap paper—hotel stationery, backs of envelopes, torn pages from newspapers and maga- zines—random inspirations that came from sleepless postgame nights, from twenty-two miles of silent highway from home to the Forum and back (“When am I going to remember to put a pen in that glove com- partment?”), from games behind a peerless defense that often left me with nothing else to do. I was sure that, clipped together, filed, laid end-to-end, they would become a book. They did not. Like most mid- night thoughts, what I found in the morning looked disturbingly thin and incomplete, often contradictory, not at all the story that had seemed to me so different and untold. Yet each scrap would later become a useful trigger for recollections otherwise lost. It was a book I couldn’t have written while I played. It needed time. As it is with a game, I needed to wait for lifelong, career-long feelings to settle and sort themselves out. I needed to distance myself from things I had long since stopped seeing, to see them again. In the end, it turned out to be the kind of wonderful, awful, agonizing, bor- ing, thrilling time others have described writing to be. One of those things we call “an experience.”
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