"For me, it was just when he talked you could see he knew the game of hockey," Canadiens coach Claude Julien said. "Not only that, he was a pretty smart man. Even a long, long time ago, when probably it wasn't as easy, he knew what was going on in the dressing room and with the team. He was a pretty smart individual. We had some good chats and, honestly, he said some things to me that were pretty impressive."
Dryden said Fisher took nothing for granted during his career.
"Red had every right to have been a 'been-there-done-that' person, but he wasn't," Dryden said. "He watched every game with open eyes, because he knew that what he was doing wasn't about him. He knew that if a game was being played, it mattered. If players were playing it, they mattered. If fans were watching it, they mattered. If readers were reading his story, they mattered. And if he was writing it, he mattered. Red took the game, the Canadiens, his readers and himself very seriously."