Famous person is dead. R.I.P. [R]

When I was 14 and he was 17 or 18, he was at Lakefield CS-- or was it Lakewood? We played them both-- they came down and played the Cornell Freshman team. Clobbered them something like 10-4. Then played us on the way home that Sunday.

They tied us 4-4 in the literal last second when a bad angle desperation shot found the gap between our goalie's blade and boot-- he never wore goal skates-- and we did not get our signature win...

The next year we had an even better team, and played him again at Cornell-- but they had a much better team and slaughtered us.

A great player, an articulate one, and still on the very short list for best ever, with Broda, Francis, Plante, etc...RIP.

 

Humanitarian. Cornellian. Intellectual.
Ken Dryden '69 was a Renaissance man. His life reached far beyond hockey. In hockey, he was a national champion, 3x Whitelaw Cup champion, 2x Frozen Four Finalist, & 3x Frozen Four participant in his 3 seasons of eligibility @CornellMHockey https://t.co/8LZS9pkWdq

— Aaron M. Griffin (@AMG1013) September 6, 2025

I'm trying to find the picture of the Russian-language Ken Dryden hockey card I saw earlier to no avail.

How many can say they have a Russian-language hockey card?

 

RIP Ken Dryden


I can safely say: no goalie, in the history of the game, will ever come close to achieving what Ken Dryden did in 9 years. Mainly because he was on dominant Montreal teams. Played only 8 NHL seasons. In that window he won:

6 Stanley Cups
5 Vezina Trophies
Calder Trophy
Conn Smythe Trophy

Took 1974 off because he didn't like his contract offer and used that time to become a lawyer. Was also an author, politician, broadcaster.

 

Somebody else who was pretty good in goal.

I always looked up to Ken Dryden. He revolutionized the position & rose to the occasion in big moments. Beyond his greatness on the ice, he was a remarkable person, and the hockey community will miss him dearly. My condolences to the Dryden family. Photo by my dad, Denis Brodeur pic.twitter.com/vmgANLIa9O

— Martin Brodeur (@MartinBrodeur) September 6, 2025

 

A young Carey Price meeting Ken Dryden.

Two Habs legends ♥️ pic.twitter.com/IBRioToosz

— /r/Habs (@HabsOnReddit) September 6, 2025

 

There are so many great stories about Ken Dryden. Here’s one:

He wrote (and passed) his bar exam in Ottawa 🇨🇦 back in February, 1980.

The following day, he drove to Lake Placid to call the Miracle on Ice 🇺🇸 Olympic gold medal game with Al Michaels on ABC. pic.twitter.com/vTN4QMeneL

— /r/Habs (@HabsOnReddit) September 6, 2025

 

Not ashamed to admit I've shed a few tears at the news of his passing.

Deeply saddened to learn of the passing of the Hon. Ken Dryden, a Canadian hockey legend and hall of famer, public servant and inspiration. He was a 6-time Stanley Cup Champion, 5-time Vezina trophy winner, Minister of Social Development, and dedicated Parliamentarian.

Ken…

— Mark Carney (@MarkJCarney) September 6, 2025

 

He signed it "your friend, Ken Dryden." A small gesture ... but a huge thing for a little Chinese-Canadian boy. 25 yrs later I booked Dryden on a CBC TV show. In the CBC elevator, I told him how much it meant to my brother all those yrs ago. Ken was humbled, genuinely moved. 2/3 pic.twitter.com/2a5DN7oYjN

— Christine Wong (@thatchriswong) September 6, 2025

 

Here it is. Lol. Russian-language hockey card while playing for Canada against the USSR.

At 13yrs old I vowed to marry Ken Dryden when I grew up. I clipped out every newspaper photo of him & plastered my room w/pics & posters. …And now he’ll never know. RIP my sweet Kenny ❤️You were great in the Summit Series (but I confess now,Tony Esposito was better. Sorry) pic.twitter.com/azTURkXJD2

— Bonnie M. Case (@BonnieBonzo1) September 6, 2025

 

Thanks for this. You know, thinking of it now it's not at all surprising Ken Dryden chose to go the NCAA route instead of staying in Canada to play Major Junior given education was important to him. These days for a Canadian to go the NCAA route is normal and indeed many are opting for the NCAA but back in the late 60's it must have been unheard of.

 

First time I went to Ithaca a few years ago, I walked up the gorge between downtown and the Cornell campus, then walked around the campus. I came across Dryden Road, and thought, “well, he deserves to have the campus thoroughfare named after him.”

Alas, I recently learned that the road leds to a town named Dryden, after the 18th c. English poet.

I think the goalie is more deserving, and I say this as an literature professor.

 

Dryden was before my time but I did read one of his books "The Game" as a teenager lent to me a Scabs fan. As well, one day I popped into his office when he was an MP in Downsview (Political Riding in Toronto) hoping I could meet him. He wasn't in office that but left with a government issued Canadian Flag much to the reluctance of the lady there.

 

Last one

I had the privilege of having several cups of coffee at my house with Ken Dryden to discuss concussion research and the great game of hockey. His wisdom, integrity, and leadership left a lasting impression on me. Ken was a remarkable person and someone I admired greatly. pic.twitter.com/vN0FdKBCH6

— Eric Lindros (@88EricLindros) September 6, 2025

“.. A goalie’s job is to stop pucks.. Well yeah, that’s part of it, but you know what else is? ..You’re trying to deliver a message to your team that things are OK back here, that this end of the ice is pretty well cared for. YOU take it now and go. Go! Feel the freedom in order to feel that dynamic, creative, offensive player and go out and score.. That was my job.. it was to try to deliver a feeling..”
~ Ken Dryden

 

Not entirely-- the colleges we played the Freshman teams of -- St Lawrence, Canton, Middlebury, Norwich, Hamilton, Potsdam, Colgate, UMass tended to have a few to quite a few. But I think they were mostly not Dryden level recruits. Such futures as they had in hockey were more AHL/ IHL than NHL. Good skaters and a challenge for 16 and 17 year old preppies, but...

And the high schools around us--Placid, Potsdam, Canton, Messina-- were regularly scouted for talent to be acquired by teams in the Canadian Juniors system, though the results were not all that good, I think. American kids tended to arrive and find to their horror that they were actually required to attend school, and leave in an indignant huff--"I came here to play hockey!" The best player from Lake Placid HS lasted about ten days in-- Peterbrough? (been a long time)-- before coming back to play for the local semipro team, the Roamers. Benji Gadbois, pronounced "Gad-waw...

 

I like that.

But even more I like what one of my first mentors in goaltending said whenever somebody blamed a goal on somebody else: "You know--if my teammates didn't ever make a mistake, they wouldn't need a goalie, now, would they." That piece of wisdom became the lynchpin of both my playing and coaching career. Even moreso than "Don't be afraid to look bad-- just try not to look good not stopping the puck."

 

Wow, that is a shame.
One of my absolute favorite bands back in high school and beyond.
Will Shatter died in 1987 which was a blow to the band.

I saw them in 1984 or so.
Bruce was completely wasted and basically incoherent.

Saw them in the mid 1990's, as well.
They were far less incoherent.

Then I saw them about 6 years ago with David Yow (Jesus Lizard and Scratch Acid) on vocals.
Ted Falconi
Steve DePace
and
Frightwig's Rachel Thoele on bass.

It was terrific but was not the same.

 

As a Blackhawks fan, I really came to hate that pose in the above tweet. That was his go-to rest pose in that epic Stanley Cup final (1971, IIRC)Hated the bastardized. Of course, I wasn’t even ten years old yet. But they won a few once I was old, so all is forgiven.

 

Flowers rest in the arms of a life-sized bronze statue honouring Ken Dryden the day after his passing. The statue is located at the Raymond Bourque Arena in Ville Saint-Laurent.

-- montrealgazette.com

 

This was an article Ken Dryden wrote earlier this year, February 2025, after the 4 Nations Face-off and political climate.

Sometimes sporting events really are bigger than the game itself.

By Ken Dryden -- February 23, 2025

Last Saturday, I was in Montreal for the Canada-U.S. hockey game in the 4 Nations Cup. I knew I needed to be there. A few nights later, I was at home in front of our TV for the final game, which Canada won 3–2 in overtime. I watched every moment, from before the game began to after it ended. I almost never do that. Those games, I knew, were going to say something—about Canadian players, about Canadian fans, about Canada. Maybe something about the United States too. I didn’t know what.

Sports can tell big stories. I was one of two goalies for Canada in the Canada–Soviet Union series in 1972, the first international best-against-best hockey series. Until that moment, professional players from the NHL were not eligible to compete in the amateurs-only Olympic Games or World Championships. Canada was where hockey originated, where all of the best players in the world were born and developed. To the total annoyance of Canadians, year after year the Soviet Union, not Canada, became known as “World Champions.”

The 1972 showdown was eight games: four in Canada, four in Moscow. Everyone—the Canadian players and fans, even the Soviet players and fans and the experts from both countries—knew that Canada would win decisively, likely all eight games and by big scores.

In Game 1 in Montreal, the Soviets won, 7–3. Imagine the reaction all across Canada. Then multiply that by 10.

Instantly, the stakes changed. Something deeper than hockey pride was on the line. We were the best in the world when it came to hockey; the rest of the world didn’t think about Canada that way when it came to many other things. Now we had lost. What did that say about us? About Canada? About Canadians? The next seven games would decide. These were the stakes.

We left Canada trailing two games to one, with one game tied. We lost the first game in Moscow. The series was all but over. Then we won the next two games, leaving it to one final game. In 1972, not many North Americans traveled to Europe; almost none went to Moscow. Three thousand Canadians were in that arena. They were there because, somehow, they knew they had to be there. For the last game, on a Thursday, played entirely during work and school hours all across the country, 16 million out of Canada’s population of 22 million people watched. Behind two goals to start the third period, we tied the game, then won it, and the series, with 34 seconds remaining. I felt immense excitement. I felt even more immense relief. In that series, Canadians discovered a depth of feeling for their country that they hadn’t known was there.

In 1980, I was the other person in the Olympics booth in Lake Placid, New York, when the U.S. beat the Soviets and won the gold medal. (When Al Michaels said, “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!,” I said, “Unbelievable.”) At the beginning of the Olympics, for the U.S., there were no stakes. The team was made up almost entirely of college kids. The Soviets, at the time, were the best team in the world. Even after the U.S. team won some early games, their players seemed on a roll to enjoy, not to be taken seriously. Then they beat the Soviets and two days later defeated Finland to win the gold.

This was not a good time for the U.S. in the world. Among other problems and conflicts, Iran was holding 52 Americans hostage in Tehran. Weeks passed. The U.S. seemed powerless to get them back. Unbeknownst to all but a few, six of the hostages—all American diplomats—had escaped and were being hidden in the Canadian Embassy. The Canadians sheltered the diplomats for months, and eventually helped them escape. The news that the diplomats had made it safely out of Iran came just before the Lake Placid games began. Everywhere I went around the village, Americans came up to me and said, “Thank you, Canada,” as if they were otherwise friendless in the world.

In 1980, hockey was not a major sport in the U.S., and so Americans had no expectation or even hope of winning against the Soviets. What they did have at stake in 1980 was the Cold War. That, they had to win. The hockey team’s victory in Lake Placid felt like part of this bigger fight. It fit the story Americans wanted to tell about themselves. And although hockey was a fairly minor sport, 45 years later, for many Americans, the “Miracle on Ice” remains their favorite patriotic sports moment.

Now to today. Now to the 4 Nations Cup. Being Canadian these past few months hasn’t been a lot of fun. The threat and now the coming reality of high tariffs on Canadian goods exported to the U.S.—and the disruptions and dislocations, known and unknown, that these tariffs will cause—are never out of mind. Even more difficult in the day-to-day is Donald Trump’s relentless and insulting commentary.

Canada as the U.S.’s “51st state”; Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “Governor Trudeau”; the U.S. using “economic force” to annex Canada, its nearest ally and inescapable geographical fact of life. It’s the kind of trolling that Trump does to everyone, to every country, whenever he wants to, because as president of the most powerful nation on Earth, he knows he can. He loves to watch the weak wobble and cringe, and those who think they’re strong discover they’re not.

Na na na na na. It sets a tone. It lets everyone know who’s boss. It’s what he’d done all his life in business. And although at a boardroom table he wasn’t always the guy with the deepest pockets, in the Oval Office of the United States of America, he knows he is. Being Donald Trump got him elected, but being president is what allows him to be Donald Trump. On November 5, nobody had as much at stake in the election’s result as he did. He needed to win to hold the world’s highest office, to avoid lawsuits and prison time. He needed to win to be him.

It's been amazing to watch world leaders of proud, historically significant countries, kings in their own domain, suck up to Donald Trump, to see billionaires and business titans, who know how the game is played—cater to political authority in public, play hardball in private—who reside proudly and smugly above and beyond politics, fold like a cheap suit. And later, when they do respond, because prime ministers, presidents, and CEOs eventually have to say something, their words sound so lame. “There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States,” Trudeau said. By answering at all, you end up making any slur sound slightly, disturbingly legitimate, and you make yourself look weak.

How would Americans react if a president or prime minister of another country said the same about their president? That he’s crooked, crazy, a lunatic, a loser? That he’s the worst president in the history of the world? That their country is just another failed empire in its final death throes? That both president and country are a disgrace and everyone knows it? Probably not well.

But what do you do? What do the decision makers in other countries do? What do average Canadians, average Panamanians and Danes, what do ordinary people anywhere do? That’s why I needed to be at that game in Montreal.

Thirty years earlier, in 1995, on the weekend before Quebec’s second referendum on independence, my family and I went to Montreal to wander the city, to try to sense what Quebeckers were feeling, but mostly just to be there. On a Saturday night, we went to a Montreal Canadiens game. We wanted to be there for the singing of “O Canada.” The next day, a reporter for an English-language newspaper wrote that it was the loudest he had ever heard the anthem sung at a game. What he didn’t notice was that 10,000 people sang their hearts out, and 10,000 people were silent.

Last Saturday in Montreal, the arena was filled with fans in red-and-white Canada jerseys. The NHL and the NHL Players Association, which had organized the event, did what organizers do. They asked the fans to be respectful of both teams during the anthems. The fans decided not to be managed. They booed “The Star-Spangled Banner” loudly. They were not booing the American players. They were booing Donald Trump. Why shouldn’t he know how they felt? Why shouldn’t Americans know? How else would they know?

Five nights later in Boston, at the final game, the fans booed “O Canada,” but not very loudly.

The game was a classic. The two best teams in the world: Canada, the heart and soul, conscience and bedrock of the game; the U.S., in its development and growth, the great story in hockey in the past 30 years. Both teams played as well as they’d ever played. Their great stars played like great stars; some other players discovered in themselves something even they didn’t know was there. The U.S. could’ve won. The team was good enough to win. Canada won because of Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, and Sidney Crosby—and for the same reason Canada won against the Soviets in 1972.

Everybody, every country, has something inside them that is fundamental. That matters so much that it’s not negotiable. That’s deeply, deeply personal. Something that, if threatened, you’d do anything to protect, and keep on doing it until it’s done, even if it seems to others to make no sense. Even if it seems stupid. This is how wars start.

For Panama, some things are fundamental. For Denmark, China, Russia, Germany, Ukraine, Canada—for everyone—it’s the same. And when you get pushed too much, too far, you rediscover what that fundamental is. Poke the bear and you find out there’s more in the bear than you know, than even the bear knows.

For Canada and these other countries, you don’t poke back against Donald Trump. You don’t troll a troll. You look into yourselves and find again what makes you special, why you matter, to yourselves, to the world, and knowing that, knowing that that is you, with that as your pride and backbone, you fight back.

The U.S. has its own fights. It faces these same questions. What is fundamental to America? “Greatness”? Maybe. But greatness depends on the needs of a country and the needs of the world at a particular moment and time, and being great in the ways that are needed. These next four years will not be easy for anyone—and they will be perhaps especially difficult for the United States.

As for the 51st state crap, knock it off. It’s beneath you.

For Donald Trump, everything is a transaction. You look to make a deal, you push and shove, scratch and claw—you do whatever it takes. And if that doesn’t work, you do some more, until at some point you walk away and make another deal. It’s just business.

Only some things aren’t business. Every so often, Canadians are defiantly not-American. They will need to be much more than that in the next four years. Canadians will need to be defiantly Canadian. Canada won in 1972 and again last week because winning was about more than business. It was personal.

About the Author:

Ken Dryden was a goaltender for the Montreal Canadiens in the 1970s, during which time the team won six Stanley Cups. He is a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame; was a Member of the Canadian Parliament and a cabinet minister; and is the author of several books.

 

Rick Davies of Supertramp.

Breakfast in America was the first album I bought that wasn’t a kiddie album, wasn’t the Jackson Five or the Monkees, etc. I heard The Logical Song and just had to have it. That album started my love affair with music.

 

Probably the best album I have never actually owned. Somehow I allowed the fact that I didn't really like their others to restrain me, and I never got around to getting it.

Of course it stayed on, nay dominated, the radio about as long as I would actually have kept it on the stereo table before shelving it anyway...

 

just curious...what did you do with Hotel California???

 

Bought it way before the title track took off; IIRC the first single was "Already Gone." Let it go years ago.

There's nothing wrong with either the album or song IMO-- they're just horrendously overplayed. Only Eagles album I ever listen to anymore is "Desperado."

 

American Senator (I-Vermont) and guy who has sponsored a number of resolutions but passed almost zero actual legislation (well, 3 pieces of legislation, he managed to rename two post offices and had the Veterans' Compensation Cost of Living Adjustment passed*), Bernie Sanders is still alive.

Of course, we know he is still alive, as he is constantly on television.

He is 84 years old and still going strong, just not getting anything actually done.



[Note, I like Senator Sanders, he is very effective at communicating the problems in the country, but not at actually managing to enact solutions to those problems).


*https://www.congress.gov/member/bernie-sanders/S000033?s=1&r=1&q={"search":["bernie+sanders"],"sponsorship":"sponsored","bill-status":"law"}

 

(Of course, anything the Democrats have gotten passed in the last 12 or 14 years has needed his vote-- and anything that has not gotten it has not passed, I think...)