Dryden relishes another piece of hockey history at 4 Nations Face-Off

MONTREAL -- The business portion of Ken Dryden’s trip was done, having sat on a banquet hall stage Friday with five former teammates for the NHL Alumni Association’s salute to Canada’s iconic 1972 Summit Series team.

Now, the greatest goalie of the 1970s was looking forward to being in a Bell Centre seat Saturday night for the most eagerly anticipated game on Montreal ice in decades -- Canada against the United States in the 4 Nations Face-Off.

Dryden would be forgiven had he thought that he’d somehow been transported to the old Philadelphia Spectrum, home of the 1970s Broad Street Bullies.

It was Ultimate Fighting Championship legend Georges St-Pierre, a demigod in Quebec, who whipped up the Bell Centre crowd just before the opening face-off. By coincidence, perhaps, three fights exploded in the game’s first nine seconds.

Logos of Canada and the United States are projected on Bell Centre ice before the warmup Saturday night.

The latest chapter in this sensational Canada-U.S. rivalry was written, as it should have been, in the cradle of the NHL, in the city where the League was founded in 1917. History will record it as a 3-1 victory for the United States, Bell Centre shaking to its foundation from before the start.

The result was only part of the story, of course, the significance of and the buildup to the event transcending what happened on the ice.

Such was the case more than a half-century ago when Dryden was in a Montreal Forum net for Game 1 of the 1972 Summit Series, a 7-3 nation-crushing loss to the hugely underestimated Soviet Union.

He was in a Forum goal on New Year’s Eve in 1975 for the Montreal Canadiens’ 3-3 tie against the U.S.S.R.’s Central Red Army, political ideologies as much the night’s opponents as hockey’s two best club teams.

Ken Dryden in his iconic pose, leaning on his stick, during a break in the action at the Montreal Forum during a 1970s game.

The crackling energy in Bell Centre on Saturday was enough to light the building, the heat enough to melt the mountains of snow outside. The hockey intensity that instantly boiled over was arguably the greatest seen in the city since the historic games against the Soviets in 1972 and 1975, including the Canadiens’ almost inevitable 1993 Stanley Cup home-ice victory against the Los Angeles Kings, the team’s 24th and most recent championship.

Naturally, Dryden headed to the arena Saturday with a different perspective on expectations.

“I don’t expect,” he said. “I’ll just wait. The crowd will react as the crowd reacts. I’m looking forward to it. I’m not going to be at the game for no reason. The official part of being here was (Friday). But I’m staying over for that game because I want to see the game and I want to hear the reaction of the crowd.”

Dryden heard plenty before the game was 10 seconds old.

Ken Dryden follows a deflected puck during a 1970s game at the Montreal Forum.

Through his seven-plus-seasons with the Canadiens in the 1970s, leading to his 1983 Hall of Fame induction, Dryden won the Stanley Cup six times, goaltending’s prestigious Vezina Trophy five times, and the 1971 Conn Smythe and 1972 Calder trophies, respectively awarded to the most valuable player in the Stanley Cup Playoffs and the NHL’s top rookie.

On the swashbuckling, brash Canadiens of the 1970s, Dryden was never “one of the boys.” He was the studious, bespectacled figure who chose to sit out the 1973-74 season over a contract dispute, earning a relative pittance that year articling for a Toronto law firm. He would return to anchor the Canadiens’ run of four consecutive championships from 1976 through his final game in 1979.

His illustrious career merely set the table for his full, rewarding post-hockey life as a lawyer and much more. Dryden has been a three-time Olympic hockey analyst, author or co-author of an impressive library of books, newspaper and magazine columnist, elected member of Canada’s Parliament, the Youth Commissioner for his native province of Ontario and president of the Maple Leafs.

Ken Dryden speaks during his jersey retirement ceremony at Montreal's Bell Centre on Jan. 29, 2007.

He has also been a professor at McGill University and a television producer, having co-created and co-produced the six-part CBC TV series “We Are Canada,” showcasing young, innovative Canadians to help celebrate the nation’s 150th birthday in 2017.

Dryden is intimately familiar with hockey on both sides of the border, having made his first important mark in the game with Cornell University, playing three years from 1966-69.

For the Big Red, he was a three-time All-America, All-ECAC and All-Ivy first-team student athlete. He set most of the school’s goaltending records while winning 76 games, losing four and tying one through his varsity career, leading his team to the 1967 NCAA championship and three consecutive Ivy League and ECAC titles.

With the Canadiens, Dryden played dozens of memorable games against U.S. opponents, his Stanley Cup championships coming against the Boston Bruins and the Chicago Black Hawks (twice each), Philadelphia Flyers and New York Rangers. He’s an insightful, sharp observer not just of the game, but of its ebbs and flows and trends.

Ken Dryden follows the play from his net during the second half of the 1972 Summit Series in Moscow.

Games pitting Canada against the U.S. in a national-team format “are terrific,” he said before Saturday’s 4 Nations clash.

“It is really a recognition of what has happened with U.S. hockey in the last 20 years in particular. I think it’s the biggest story in hockey for the last number of decades, of how there were almost no Americans in the NHL then there came to be several. Now it’s not just how many, it’s the stars.

“There are great stars on the American team. It’s hard to get volume and it’s far harder to get that highest quality. It takes a long time to go from volume to quality. The U.S. has achieved that.”

Dryden originally was Boston Bruins property, selected in the third round (No. 14) of the NHL’s 1964 amateur draft. A fan of the Bruins in his youth, he was 16, playing Junior B goal for Toronto-suburban Etobicoke.

“It was a very private draft,” he said. “It was only a couple weeks later that our (minor) teams would inform us that we’d been drafted.”

Ken Dryden, age 7, poses for an on-ice portrait as a member of the Islington Hornets of the Humber Valley Hockey Association in 1955 in Toronto-suburban Etobicoke, Ontario.

It wasn’t until the mid-1970s with the Canadiens that Dryden even knew that he had been drafted by the Bruins.

“I always thought I’d been drafted by Montreal,” he said. “Do I regret not playing for the Bruins? No, I’m happy the way things turned out.”

In fact, the Bruins had the Canadiens select defenseman Guy Allen for them in the second round (No. 12), then traded Dryden and forward Alex Campbell, Boston’s No. 2 overall pick, to the Canadiens for Allen and forward Paul Reid (No. 18). Campbell, Allen and Reid never played an NHL game.

Dryden loves Boston to this day, the old Garden his favorite road arena. The 4 Nations tournament is now heading to TD Garden for two games on Monday, then the championship final on Thursday.

Ken Dryden and Boston Bruins legend Johnny Bucyk and two youth hockey players perform the ceremonial face-off between Boston captain Brad Marchand and Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki before the Bruins’ Centennial game at TD Garden on Dec. 1, 2024.

This past Dec. 1, Dryden represented the Canadiens at TD Garden for the Bruins’ Centennial game against Montreal, dropping the ceremonial face-off with Boston legend Johnny Bucyk.

Dryden was a painful thorn in the Bruins’ side throughout the 1970s, especially in the stunning quarterfinal upset of the defending Stanley Cup champions in 1971, not yet even a rookie with just six regular-season NHL games – all wins – to his credit.

In 54 career regular-season and playoff games against Boston, he won 32, lost 13 and tied nine with a 2.37 goals-against average and .912 save percentage. And yet, he was given a roaring welcome by Bruins fans when he walked onto TD Garden ice.

“That was really touching,” Dryden said. “Bruins fans had every reason to hate the Canadiens. During the 1970s, we beat them every time (winning playoff series in 1971, 1977, 1978 and 1979, the middle two in the Final).

The cover of Ken Dryden’s 2022 book “The Series,” published on the 50th anniversary of the 1972 Summit Series, and in action in Moscow during the second half of the series, stopping a shot with defenseman Bill White blocking a Soviet player.

“They could have resented us, hated us. They did, to some extent, but they didn’t hate us the way they hated the Rangers or the Flyers. There was a lot of respect, a certain admiration, a feeling that ‘They’re too good to hate. I’d love to try but I can’t.’ As much as Boston fans sound tough and talk tough, there’s not a meanness to them, which there was at times in New York and Philadelphia.”

We’ll see how deep Boston’s love for Canada might be on Monday when the 4 Nations hits TD Garden. After three main events nine seconds into Saturday’s game, and a blistering game that followed, all bets are off.

Top photo: Ken Dryden speaks at the NHL Alumni Association’s salute to Canada’s 1972 Summit Series team on Feb. 14, 2025 in Montreal.