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The Game
Widely acknowledged as the best hockey book ever written and lauded by "Sports Illustrated" as one of the Top 10 Sports Books of All Time, "The Game" is a reflective and thought-provoking look at a life in hockey. Ken Dryden, the former Montreal Canadiens goalie and former president of the Toronto Maple Leafs, captures the essence of the sport and what it means to all hockey fans. He gives vivid and affectionate portraits of the characters--Guy Lafleur, Larry Robinson, Guy Lapointe, Serge Savard, and coach Scotty Bowman among them--who made the Canadiens of the 1970s one of the greatest hockey teams in history. But beyond that, Dryden reflects on life on the road, in the spotlight, and on the ice, offering a rare inside look at the game of hockey and an incredible personal memoir. This commemorative edition marks the 30th anniversary of the book's original publication, and it includes a new foreword by Bill Simmons, new photography, and a new chapter, "The Game Goes On." Take a journey to the heart and soul of the game with this timeless hockey classic.
248 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1983
674 people are currently reading
7431 people want to read
About the author
Ken Dryden
19 books90 followersKenneth Wayne "Ken" Dryden is a Canadian politician, lawyer, businessman, author, and former NHL goaltender. He is an officer of the Order of Canada and a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame. Dryden was a Liberal Member of Parliament from 2004, also serving as a cabinet minister from 2004 to 2006, until losing his seat in the 2011 Canadian federal elections to Conservative Mark Adler.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 471 reviews
August 15, 2024
“The game,” in Canada, is ice hockey. I was reminded of that ineluctable fact of Canadian life the last time I was in Quebec City, when I walked through the historic downtown section of the walled Québécois capital and observed that the shopping district was home to two sports-memorabilia stores – one for hockey, and one for every other sport.
In Canada, you see, other games are fine and important games, but hockey is the game. And the reader who wants to get a strong sense of the strategic and tactical intricacies of hockey on the players’ level, and of the importance of hockey in Canadian culture, should make a breakaway straight toward Ken Dryden’s 1983 book The Game.
Author Dryden will need no introduction to National Hockey League fans, or indeed to most Canadians. During his eight years as goaltender for the Montreal Canadiens, from 1971 to 1979, the team won six Stanley Cups, and Dryden himself was a five-time winner of the Vezina Trophy that is awarded to hockey’s best goaltender. While he was at it, he also won a Conn Smythe Trophy as most valuable NHL player (1971) and a Calder Memorial Trophy as best first-year player (1972). His jersey number, 29, is one of only 15 that have been retired by the Canadiens, one of the most successful franchises of all time in any sport.
And Dryden’s achievements extend beyond the hockey rink. Drawing upon the McGill University law degree that he earned during a one-year break from his career with the Canadiens, Dryden served in the Canadian Parliament from 2004 to 2011, including two years as a cabinet-level minister in the Liberal Party government of Prime Minister Paul Martin. Along with all of these other Renaissance-man qualifications that helped make him an Officer of the Order of Canada, he is also a brilliant writer, as The Game amply demonstrates.
Early in The Game, Dryden looks back to his growing-up years in the Toronto suburb of Islington, Ontario. There, Dryden and his friends would play pick-up hockey in the Dryden family’s big asphalt-paved backyard. While playing all those games with his friends, the young Dryden, like many another Canadian boy from Halifax to Victoria, would find time to indulge his own dreams of future NHL stardom:
I would stand alone in the middle of the yard, a stick in my hands, a tennis ball in front of me, silent, still, then suddenly dash ahead, stickhandling furiously, dodging invisible obstacles for a shot on net. It was Maple Leaf Gardens filled to wildly cheering capacity, a tie game, seconds remaining. I was Frank Mahovlich, or Gordie Howe, I was anyone I wanted to be, and the voice in my head was that of Leafs broadcaster Foster Hewitt: “…there’s ten seconds left, Mahovlich, winding up at his own line, at center, eight seconds, seven, over the blueline, six – he winds up, he shoots, he scores!…My arms and stick flew into the air, I screamed a scream inside my head, and collected my ball to do it again – many times, for many minutes, the hero of all my own games. (p. 56)
Unlike most Canadian boys, Dryden would get to live out his dreams of NHL stardom – although, ironically enough, he would play not for his hometown Toronto Maple Leafs, but rather for the Leafs’ archrivals, the Montreal Canadiens. And he would not be the fast-shooting wing or centre on the breakaway, but rather the goalie trying to stop that player on offence from scoring.
Nowadays, when many parents of promising young prospects monitor every detail of nutrition, education, and (most of all) practice in hopes of producing a future star for the Calgary Flames or Vancouver Canucks, it can be salutary to reflect that Dryden’s own rise to NHL success did not follow any such trajectory. Indeed, it all sounds rather like a bit of a lark. “Coming to Montreal as a part-time goalie with the [minor-league Montreal] Voyageurs while completing law school, I thought the Canadiens would simply take over from my parents for a time, paying my tuition and books, my room and board and little else until I graduated. Then, after giving them one more year as I was obliged to do, I would merely stop playing and they would stop paying. But I was better than we both thought” (p. 154).
Looking back on a long career in hockey – two years with major-junior teams in the Toronto neighbourhoods of Humber Valley and Etobicoke; four years as a goalie at Cornell; one year with the American Hockey League Voyageurs, and then nine seasons with the Canadiens – Dryden tots up the stitches, muscle pulls, broken bones, cartilage tears, and other injuries he has endured, and then gives the reader a strong sense of the price a hockey player pays for a career of being the cynosure of all eyes on Hockey Night in Canada:
[W]hile I am well protected, and know I’m unlikely to suffer more than a bruise from any shot that is taken, the puck hurts, constantly and cumulatively: through the pillow-thick leg pads I wear, where straps pulled tight around their shins squeeze much of the padding away; through armor-shelled skate boots; through a catching glove compromised too far for its flexibility; with a dull, aching nausea from stomach to throat when my jock slams back against my testes; and most often, on my arms, on wrists and forearms especially, where padding is light and often out of place, where a shot hits and spreads its ache, up an arm and through a body, until both go limp and feel lifeless. Through a season, a puck hurts like a long, slow battering from a skilled boxer, almost unnoticed in the beginning, but gradually wearing me down, until two or three times a year, I wake up in the morning sore, aching, laughing/moaning with each move I make, and feel a hundred years old. (p. 116)
One also learns to appreciate the psychological pressures facing an NHL goalie, and particularly one who plays in hockey-mad Montreal, with its knowledgeable and demanding fan base. Dryden recalls a home game at the Montreal Forum, when a Detroit Red Wings player scored a goal that Dryden knew he should have stopped. He leaned nonchalantly on his stick for a moment, as had become his habit after either an excellent save or a bad goal that he should have stopped – “In a quietly defiant way it reminds fans and opponents, ‘You’ll never get to me’” (p. 198) – but inside he was seething: “Pacing, sweeping, caged in my crease, I scream at myself.” And after a teammate, defenceman Larry Robinson, offered a word of comfort and then skated away, “I hear the crowd, this time a loud grumbling buzz. I’ve lost them” (p. 200).
With hockey stardom, Dryden explains, things often seem unchanged in terms of everyday life specifics like his home, his car, his clothes, the food he eats. In those aspects, he could be any 30-year-old Torontonian living and working in Montreal. Yet Dryden has more money, and a team of finance professionals to help him manage it, and money changes everything. “When I talk to old friends who earn a thirty-year-old’s average wage, they seem uncomfortable, or I do. For me, money, which seemed always a by-product, distant, even unrelated to the game, has taken on new importance. A cause of great bitterness and division, it brought me to retire for a year; a cold-eyed standard against which I judge my relationship with the team, and against which I am now judged. It is the other side of the Faustian bargain” (p. 155).
Other pleasures of Dryden’s The Game include his tough-minded analysis of fighting as a part of hockey. He feels that the NHL’s laissez-faire attitude toward fighting in hockey is drawn, whether NHL executives realize it or not, from “ Freud’s ‘drive-discharge’ theory of human aggression” – in effect, the belief that letting the players let off a little bit of steam through fighting keeps them from bottling up that aggression and releasing it in more severe and damaging ways.
Yet Dryden contrasts that “let ’em fight” mentality – the kind of thing that one might hear from hockey commentators like Don Cherry – with the research-based perspectives of anthropologists Desmond Morris and Richard Sipes, both of whom believe that violence is more likely to provoke more violence. Indeed, Morris and Spies would tell you - correctly, in my opinion - that violent behaviour teaches people that violence is a way to solve their problems. I have never liked the fighting in hockey, and I agree wholeheartedly with Dryden’s statement that “fighting degrades…bringing into question hockey’s very legitimacy, confining it forever to the fringes of sports respectability” (pp. 189-90). Those who want to watch fighting can head over to pay-per-view MMA anyway.
And then there is Dryden’s sheer power of observation. I liked his description of Guy Lafleur, the fast-skating right wing for those great Canadiens teams of the 1970’s, as a Muhammad Ali-like figure who used speed, skill, and smarts to outwit and defeat bigger, heavier opponents. And any resident of or visitor to Toronto will appreciate Dryden’s description of that lovely, tidy, relentlessly orderly city as a place where everyone crosses only with the green light, and only at the crosswalk – where, if the city puts up a POST NO BILLS sign on a wall, people actually post no bills.
It should be no surprise that The Game was named one of the 100 best English Canadian books of the 20th century. Dryden played in goal, rather than on offence, but The Game hits every goal at which this gifted author aims.
In Canada, you see, other games are fine and important games, but hockey is the game. And the reader who wants to get a strong sense of the strategic and tactical intricacies of hockey on the players’ level, and of the importance of hockey in Canadian culture, should make a breakaway straight toward Ken Dryden’s 1983 book The Game.
Author Dryden will need no introduction to National Hockey League fans, or indeed to most Canadians. During his eight years as goaltender for the Montreal Canadiens, from 1971 to 1979, the team won six Stanley Cups, and Dryden himself was a five-time winner of the Vezina Trophy that is awarded to hockey’s best goaltender. While he was at it, he also won a Conn Smythe Trophy as most valuable NHL player (1971) and a Calder Memorial Trophy as best first-year player (1972). His jersey number, 29, is one of only 15 that have been retired by the Canadiens, one of the most successful franchises of all time in any sport.
And Dryden’s achievements extend beyond the hockey rink. Drawing upon the McGill University law degree that he earned during a one-year break from his career with the Canadiens, Dryden served in the Canadian Parliament from 2004 to 2011, including two years as a cabinet-level minister in the Liberal Party government of Prime Minister Paul Martin. Along with all of these other Renaissance-man qualifications that helped make him an Officer of the Order of Canada, he is also a brilliant writer, as The Game amply demonstrates.
Early in The Game, Dryden looks back to his growing-up years in the Toronto suburb of Islington, Ontario. There, Dryden and his friends would play pick-up hockey in the Dryden family’s big asphalt-paved backyard. While playing all those games with his friends, the young Dryden, like many another Canadian boy from Halifax to Victoria, would find time to indulge his own dreams of future NHL stardom:
I would stand alone in the middle of the yard, a stick in my hands, a tennis ball in front of me, silent, still, then suddenly dash ahead, stickhandling furiously, dodging invisible obstacles for a shot on net. It was Maple Leaf Gardens filled to wildly cheering capacity, a tie game, seconds remaining. I was Frank Mahovlich, or Gordie Howe, I was anyone I wanted to be, and the voice in my head was that of Leafs broadcaster Foster Hewitt: “…there’s ten seconds left, Mahovlich, winding up at his own line, at center, eight seconds, seven, over the blueline, six – he winds up, he shoots, he scores!…My arms and stick flew into the air, I screamed a scream inside my head, and collected my ball to do it again – many times, for many minutes, the hero of all my own games. (p. 56)
Unlike most Canadian boys, Dryden would get to live out his dreams of NHL stardom – although, ironically enough, he would play not for his hometown Toronto Maple Leafs, but rather for the Leafs’ archrivals, the Montreal Canadiens. And he would not be the fast-shooting wing or centre on the breakaway, but rather the goalie trying to stop that player on offence from scoring.
Nowadays, when many parents of promising young prospects monitor every detail of nutrition, education, and (most of all) practice in hopes of producing a future star for the Calgary Flames or Vancouver Canucks, it can be salutary to reflect that Dryden’s own rise to NHL success did not follow any such trajectory. Indeed, it all sounds rather like a bit of a lark. “Coming to Montreal as a part-time goalie with the [minor-league Montreal] Voyageurs while completing law school, I thought the Canadiens would simply take over from my parents for a time, paying my tuition and books, my room and board and little else until I graduated. Then, after giving them one more year as I was obliged to do, I would merely stop playing and they would stop paying. But I was better than we both thought” (p. 154).
Looking back on a long career in hockey – two years with major-junior teams in the Toronto neighbourhoods of Humber Valley and Etobicoke; four years as a goalie at Cornell; one year with the American Hockey League Voyageurs, and then nine seasons with the Canadiens – Dryden tots up the stitches, muscle pulls, broken bones, cartilage tears, and other injuries he has endured, and then gives the reader a strong sense of the price a hockey player pays for a career of being the cynosure of all eyes on Hockey Night in Canada:
[W]hile I am well protected, and know I’m unlikely to suffer more than a bruise from any shot that is taken, the puck hurts, constantly and cumulatively: through the pillow-thick leg pads I wear, where straps pulled tight around their shins squeeze much of the padding away; through armor-shelled skate boots; through a catching glove compromised too far for its flexibility; with a dull, aching nausea from stomach to throat when my jock slams back against my testes; and most often, on my arms, on wrists and forearms especially, where padding is light and often out of place, where a shot hits and spreads its ache, up an arm and through a body, until both go limp and feel lifeless. Through a season, a puck hurts like a long, slow battering from a skilled boxer, almost unnoticed in the beginning, but gradually wearing me down, until two or three times a year, I wake up in the morning sore, aching, laughing/moaning with each move I make, and feel a hundred years old. (p. 116)
One also learns to appreciate the psychological pressures facing an NHL goalie, and particularly one who plays in hockey-mad Montreal, with its knowledgeable and demanding fan base. Dryden recalls a home game at the Montreal Forum, when a Detroit Red Wings player scored a goal that Dryden knew he should have stopped. He leaned nonchalantly on his stick for a moment, as had become his habit after either an excellent save or a bad goal that he should have stopped – “In a quietly defiant way it reminds fans and opponents, ‘You’ll never get to me’” (p. 198) – but inside he was seething: “Pacing, sweeping, caged in my crease, I scream at myself.” And after a teammate, defenceman Larry Robinson, offered a word of comfort and then skated away, “I hear the crowd, this time a loud grumbling buzz. I’ve lost them” (p. 200).
With hockey stardom, Dryden explains, things often seem unchanged in terms of everyday life specifics like his home, his car, his clothes, the food he eats. In those aspects, he could be any 30-year-old Torontonian living and working in Montreal. Yet Dryden has more money, and a team of finance professionals to help him manage it, and money changes everything. “When I talk to old friends who earn a thirty-year-old’s average wage, they seem uncomfortable, or I do. For me, money, which seemed always a by-product, distant, even unrelated to the game, has taken on new importance. A cause of great bitterness and division, it brought me to retire for a year; a cold-eyed standard against which I judge my relationship with the team, and against which I am now judged. It is the other side of the Faustian bargain” (p. 155).
Other pleasures of Dryden’s The Game include his tough-minded analysis of fighting as a part of hockey. He feels that the NHL’s laissez-faire attitude toward fighting in hockey is drawn, whether NHL executives realize it or not, from “ Freud’s ‘drive-discharge’ theory of human aggression” – in effect, the belief that letting the players let off a little bit of steam through fighting keeps them from bottling up that aggression and releasing it in more severe and damaging ways.
Yet Dryden contrasts that “let ’em fight” mentality – the kind of thing that one might hear from hockey commentators like Don Cherry – with the research-based perspectives of anthropologists Desmond Morris and Richard Sipes, both of whom believe that violence is more likely to provoke more violence. Indeed, Morris and Spies would tell you - correctly, in my opinion - that violent behaviour teaches people that violence is a way to solve their problems. I have never liked the fighting in hockey, and I agree wholeheartedly with Dryden’s statement that “fighting degrades…bringing into question hockey’s very legitimacy, confining it forever to the fringes of sports respectability” (pp. 189-90). Those who want to watch fighting can head over to pay-per-view MMA anyway.
And then there is Dryden’s sheer power of observation. I liked his description of Guy Lafleur, the fast-skating right wing for those great Canadiens teams of the 1970’s, as a Muhammad Ali-like figure who used speed, skill, and smarts to outwit and defeat bigger, heavier opponents. And any resident of or visitor to Toronto will appreciate Dryden’s description of that lovely, tidy, relentlessly orderly city as a place where everyone crosses only with the green light, and only at the crosswalk – where, if the city puts up a POST NO BILLS sign on a wall, people actually post no bills.
It should be no surprise that The Game was named one of the 100 best English Canadian books of the 20th century. Dryden played in goal, rather than on offence, but The Game hits every goal at which this gifted author aims.
August 31, 2025
Hockey + Haiku = Hocku
All poets wear masks
To protect their faces from
The slap shots of life
February 11, 2016
This book by former Montréal Canadiens Goalie Ken Dryden is nothing short of brilliant. It is certainly the best sports related biography I have ever read to this point in my life. As much as I enjoy Baseball biographies of former players of years gone by; this book by far outdoes them all. As a young lad growing up in Ontario Canada and prior to moving as a kid to Southern California – Ken Dryden was for me at the time a person I liked to despise – this of course due to my allegiance to the Toronto Maple Leafs. I have of course grown softer with age and with life experiences that have brought a reality of “not so tough” mentality; I have over the recent decade and a half followed the Montréal Canadiens as I do occasionally the NY Yankees and Boston Red Sox (even though my MLB teams are the Anaheim Angels and Washington Nationals). A game of tradition, history, a rich past it is apparent the 1967 expansion changed the game forever. Bob Dylan once said “Reality Has Many Heads” – so no wonder I came to see in print within this book the same feelings I held but didn’t want to accept that the “Maple Leaf/Canadiens rivalry is dead….has been since the late 1960’s” There goes my childhood (LOL) even though I became a Los Angeles Kings fan and later Anaheim Ducks fan in Southern California. The Gretzky years in Los Angeles were both fun and invigorating – the loss of the 1993 Stanley Cup to Les Habitant de Montréal was the result of a game changer when Marty McSorley was tossed from a game by a referee for having too large a curve on his Hockey stick. I was at the Great Western Forum in Los Angeles the night Wayne Gretzky scored goal number “802”.
Mr. Dryden is first and foremost not a boaster of his sports accomplishments; he prefers to draw attention in his book to those around him who played positively with a work ethic incumbent upon any profession. He isn’t a “snob” either in that he references periodically through his books other great sports stars in a personal occasional comparison of the NBA, MLB, NFL and there is quite an interesting passage as well that reflects the personality of a goalie. He uses this reference of reflection in the same manner that he considers a Soccer star from Europe – it is apparent that “good” goalies have rather introverted tendencies – the last line of defense in both Soccer and Hockey. I have a personal opinion that Hockey Goalies in North America are more acutely in tune with their MLB Catchers counterpart – the bending is more frequent in Hockey than soccer and the position requires a tighter space to operate within (about the same space a catcher deals with only a bit higher and wider than the strike box). Home plate or a Hockey net require control and precise ability. Jonathan Quick of the Los Angeles Kings was drafted by both the NHL and MLB for his abilities as a player on both the Hockey and Baseball Collegiate teams he played for while attending the University of Massachusetts. Mr. Dryden won 5 Stanley Cups, was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1983 and took a year off of his NHL career to finish his law degree at McGill University in Toronto; but, he earned a B.A. in History at Cornell University – he later became a Canadian Politician elected to office in the Liberal Party – the Party that currently holds the Prime Minister’s Office of Canada. He won 76 of 81 collegiate starts while playing goalie for Cornell Big Red; in 1967 he helped the team win what we call today the “Frozen Four” for a Collegiate Championship.
Mr. Dryden doesn’t brag about any of these personal accomplishments – he is most humble and is careful as to how he approaches his personal awards – his interest lay within the confines of his home and his family. Was great to read a sports book where there was no wife beating, no alcohol or steroid abuse, no arrests, and no need for intervention of any form at any part of his life. A brilliant Sports Biography – plain and simple. This is the 30th anniversary edition of the first edition printed in 1983; reprinted with an added chapter in 2013.
Mr. Dryden is first and foremost not a boaster of his sports accomplishments; he prefers to draw attention in his book to those around him who played positively with a work ethic incumbent upon any profession. He isn’t a “snob” either in that he references periodically through his books other great sports stars in a personal occasional comparison of the NBA, MLB, NFL and there is quite an interesting passage as well that reflects the personality of a goalie. He uses this reference of reflection in the same manner that he considers a Soccer star from Europe – it is apparent that “good” goalies have rather introverted tendencies – the last line of defense in both Soccer and Hockey. I have a personal opinion that Hockey Goalies in North America are more acutely in tune with their MLB Catchers counterpart – the bending is more frequent in Hockey than soccer and the position requires a tighter space to operate within (about the same space a catcher deals with only a bit higher and wider than the strike box). Home plate or a Hockey net require control and precise ability. Jonathan Quick of the Los Angeles Kings was drafted by both the NHL and MLB for his abilities as a player on both the Hockey and Baseball Collegiate teams he played for while attending the University of Massachusetts. Mr. Dryden won 5 Stanley Cups, was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1983 and took a year off of his NHL career to finish his law degree at McGill University in Toronto; but, he earned a B.A. in History at Cornell University – he later became a Canadian Politician elected to office in the Liberal Party – the Party that currently holds the Prime Minister’s Office of Canada. He won 76 of 81 collegiate starts while playing goalie for Cornell Big Red; in 1967 he helped the team win what we call today the “Frozen Four” for a Collegiate Championship.
Mr. Dryden doesn’t brag about any of these personal accomplishments – he is most humble and is careful as to how he approaches his personal awards – his interest lay within the confines of his home and his family. Was great to read a sports book where there was no wife beating, no alcohol or steroid abuse, no arrests, and no need for intervention of any form at any part of his life. A brilliant Sports Biography – plain and simple. This is the 30th anniversary edition of the first edition printed in 1983; reprinted with an added chapter in 2013.
July 10, 2019
There are hockey books.. and then there is Ken Dryden’s The Game.
The Game is former NHL goaltender Ken Dryden’s memoir of his final season playing for the Montreal Canadiens in their quest for a fourth straight Stanley Cup.
I’ve read my fair share of hockey books over my long reading career. While many have been just OK, few have been exceptional - Ken Dryden’s The Game is one of those exceptional reads. Most of the hockey books I’ve read are either more of a play-by-play recounting of the subject’s career or filled with whacky and over-the-top stories. I tend to lean toward the ones with unbelievable stories rather than the few that read like Arnold Schwarzenegger's abysmal Total Recall commentary track. I believe that is truly what sets this apart from other sports books. Dryden is more concerned with who his teammates are as people first - what drives them and sets them apart from any other Joe Schmoe holding a stick and flying across the rink.
Dryden digs into his own psyche and explains how everything happening both on and off the ice would effect him mentally. He discusses his fears and insecurities and even a crisis of identity in believing that his teammates are just so good that his role in a win or loss feels largely irrelevant at times. This is of course painfully modest considering he backstopped the Habs to six cups in eight years while collecting five Vezina trophies in the process. This isn’t uncommon though. You would be surprised to see how little faith people often have in themselves or their performance.
He discusses his controversial decision to retire at only 31 - an age where most goalies are only just hitting their prime. Still feeling good and on the top of his game, Dryden decides to go out before everything falls apart. This seems to be a sticking point for many people when discussing his legacy. I don’t get that, honestly. Look at all he accomplished in just eight seasons! What left is there to prove? Dryden is far from egotistical. He speaks honestly about losing his drive to continue on as well as his fear of being traded. It’s not like he didn’t have other options in terms of finding a career after hanging up his pads (Dryden would go on to become a hockey executive as well as a member of parliament).
If you ever wanted to truly get into the mind of an athlete - warts and all - I would struggle to think of a more honest and introspective read than Ken Dryden’s The Game The fact that it was shortlisted in 2012 for CBC’s Canada Reads debates should tell you something about how revered it is.
FYI - I read the 30th Anniversary Edition. There are two post scripts - one written in 2003 for the 20th anniversary and one written in 2013 for the 30th. Neither really offer up that much and feel tacked on to sell copies.
The Game is former NHL goaltender Ken Dryden’s memoir of his final season playing for the Montreal Canadiens in their quest for a fourth straight Stanley Cup.
I’ve read my fair share of hockey books over my long reading career. While many have been just OK, few have been exceptional - Ken Dryden’s The Game is one of those exceptional reads. Most of the hockey books I’ve read are either more of a play-by-play recounting of the subject’s career or filled with whacky and over-the-top stories. I tend to lean toward the ones with unbelievable stories rather than the few that read like Arnold Schwarzenegger's abysmal Total Recall commentary track. I believe that is truly what sets this apart from other sports books. Dryden is more concerned with who his teammates are as people first - what drives them and sets them apart from any other Joe Schmoe holding a stick and flying across the rink.
Dryden digs into his own psyche and explains how everything happening both on and off the ice would effect him mentally. He discusses his fears and insecurities and even a crisis of identity in believing that his teammates are just so good that his role in a win or loss feels largely irrelevant at times. This is of course painfully modest considering he backstopped the Habs to six cups in eight years while collecting five Vezina trophies in the process. This isn’t uncommon though. You would be surprised to see how little faith people often have in themselves or their performance.
He discusses his controversial decision to retire at only 31 - an age where most goalies are only just hitting their prime. Still feeling good and on the top of his game, Dryden decides to go out before everything falls apart. This seems to be a sticking point for many people when discussing his legacy. I don’t get that, honestly. Look at all he accomplished in just eight seasons! What left is there to prove? Dryden is far from egotistical. He speaks honestly about losing his drive to continue on as well as his fear of being traded. It’s not like he didn’t have other options in terms of finding a career after hanging up his pads (Dryden would go on to become a hockey executive as well as a member of parliament).
If you ever wanted to truly get into the mind of an athlete - warts and all - I would struggle to think of a more honest and introspective read than Ken Dryden’s The Game The fact that it was shortlisted in 2012 for CBC’s Canada Reads debates should tell you something about how revered it is.
FYI - I read the 30th Anniversary Edition. There are two post scripts - one written in 2003 for the 20th anniversary and one written in 2013 for the 30th. Neither really offer up that much and feel tacked on to sell copies.
March 31, 2025
Reading Dryden's memoir is like finding a YouTube video of John Updike tomahawk-dunking on Dr. J at Rucker Park. Athletes have no right to be this articulate! Not only is "The Game" possibly the greatest sports book ever written, I think it deserves a place in the wider Canadian canon of literature.
The book's cover, which shows Dryden standing upright in his crease, chin perched thoughtfully on his stick, surveying the action unfolding out of frame is the perfect encapsulation of the text within. It's a detailed, intensely thoughtful first person account, with a historian's ability to zoom out and see the bigger picture as well.
The pages overflow with rich passages which definitively describe Dryden's greatest teammates and bitterest rivals. As Bill Simmons writes in the foreword, Dryden "sums up Bobby Orr's game-to-game impact in two pages better than anyone else could in 500." Personally, I loved how he describes a young Larry Robinson's struggle to find his identity as a player, in a manner reminiscent of how artists describe "finding your own voice":
"...he was becoming an immense ragbag of developing skills. But he needed something around which to organize these new skills: like Lafleur's quickness, Bobby Hull's shot, Maurice Richard's insistent passion, something to focus his game, the stereotype skill to which the others could attach and find meaning, something that was his own."
It's no surprise Robinson used this passage to introduce a chapter in his own memoir many years later. "The Game" is studded with gems like that. I once quoted Dryden's description of Yvan Cournoyer's for a Facebook post, and to my surprise, nearly 10, 000 people liked it!
More personally, this was a book that resonated with me at a time when I was beginning to entertain the possibility of leaving Indigo in 2022, and without being fully conscious of it, the book was helping me "pack my bags".
Flipping through the book in 2025, I noticed that I underlined the passage: "I have not enjoyed this year very much, but it has been a necessary one. If I had retired a year ago, I would have left with doubts. Now I have none." It's funny to think that I hung on at Indigo for one more year after reading that sentence.
It's an end of an era kind of read, Dryden himself started writing this book in the final season of his career, at the age of 31 (I was also 31 when I first read it) just as the great Montreal Canadiens dynasty was coming to a close. Dryden writes extensively about the end of things, and seems acutely aware of his own athletic mortality:
"It is a life that is lived in one-quarter time. "Boy wonder", "emerging star", "middle-age problem", "aging veteran", all in ten short years, and now in his thirties and still a young man, he feels too old to start again."
I remember feeling the same way, "too old to start again", but also needing a change. Revisiting the text 3 years later I no longer feel that way, but my initial impressions/feelings are still preserved in the text, like an old song. I can't guarantee that you will have the same experience as I did, but I can guarantee you'll never read a better book about hockey than "The Game".
The book's cover, which shows Dryden standing upright in his crease, chin perched thoughtfully on his stick, surveying the action unfolding out of frame is the perfect encapsulation of the text within. It's a detailed, intensely thoughtful first person account, with a historian's ability to zoom out and see the bigger picture as well.
The pages overflow with rich passages which definitively describe Dryden's greatest teammates and bitterest rivals. As Bill Simmons writes in the foreword, Dryden "sums up Bobby Orr's game-to-game impact in two pages better than anyone else could in 500." Personally, I loved how he describes a young Larry Robinson's struggle to find his identity as a player, in a manner reminiscent of how artists describe "finding your own voice":
"...he was becoming an immense ragbag of developing skills. But he needed something around which to organize these new skills: like Lafleur's quickness, Bobby Hull's shot, Maurice Richard's insistent passion, something to focus his game, the stereotype skill to which the others could attach and find meaning, something that was his own."
It's no surprise Robinson used this passage to introduce a chapter in his own memoir many years later. "The Game" is studded with gems like that. I once quoted Dryden's description of Yvan Cournoyer's for a Facebook post, and to my surprise, nearly 10, 000 people liked it!
More personally, this was a book that resonated with me at a time when I was beginning to entertain the possibility of leaving Indigo in 2022, and without being fully conscious of it, the book was helping me "pack my bags".
Flipping through the book in 2025, I noticed that I underlined the passage: "I have not enjoyed this year very much, but it has been a necessary one. If I had retired a year ago, I would have left with doubts. Now I have none." It's funny to think that I hung on at Indigo for one more year after reading that sentence.
It's an end of an era kind of read, Dryden himself started writing this book in the final season of his career, at the age of 31 (I was also 31 when I first read it) just as the great Montreal Canadiens dynasty was coming to a close. Dryden writes extensively about the end of things, and seems acutely aware of his own athletic mortality:
"It is a life that is lived in one-quarter time. "Boy wonder", "emerging star", "middle-age problem", "aging veteran", all in ten short years, and now in his thirties and still a young man, he feels too old to start again."
I remember feeling the same way, "too old to start again", but also needing a change. Revisiting the text 3 years later I no longer feel that way, but my initial impressions/feelings are still preserved in the text, like an old song. I can't guarantee that you will have the same experience as I did, but I can guarantee you'll never read a better book about hockey than "The Game".
September 24, 2023
Hockey is, indeed, “The Game” in Canada. Watching Hockey Night in Canada meant bonding with dad, talking with friends at school about the win or loss on Monday and wondering when the Maple Leafs would be good again. It’s Paul Henderson and Guy LaFleur and The Great One. Ken Dryden, while he doesn’t like being called this, is thoughtful. He hits topics such as the Frenchness of the team, the politics of the team, how money affects a team and how the price of tickets changes the tenor of the arena. It’s not all… I did this and I did that while everybody else was an idiot type of biographies that hit every cliche. He’s honest about his shortcomings and how starting to lose affected him; he was also honest about good it felt to be good and do good on and off the ice. I also liked how he showed me the trials of life on the road rather than just saying, gee, life on the road is hard. He showed me the one sided conversation with his wife about a sick kid; he showed me the monotony of the bus, the hotel, the arena, the bus, the hotel. But he’s not without wonder, wandering around New York at night after going to the opera or a broadway show. The book made me think but mostly it made me remember the 1970’s when I had a poster of Pete Mahovolich on my wall that my dad had bought me in Montreal on a business trip. The book gave perspective to the time, and a good one at that. And that’s what great books do. Thanks for the memories, Ken!
February 29, 2016
Boy, I don’t get it. I really don’t. I’m sure I’ll take some criticism for saying this, but I just don’t understand why Ken Dryden’s The Game is considered by most to be the best hockey book ever written and by Sports Illustrated to be one of the greatest sports books ever written. Hell, I hardly read anything about sports in it! Geez, it’s about Dryden’s family, law school, desire and efforts to pass his bar exams, his disillusionment and boredom with hockey and intense desire to retire after a measly eight seasons when truly great players like Jaromir Jagr play through age 44 and beyond, or the great Gordie Howe until age 52. Dryden is so uninspiring a player and so uninspiring and dull a person that I have no idea how he accomplished the few, puny things he accomplished in his pathetically few years in the league. Most of my favorite players have played 10, 12, 15, 18 years in the league. Eight years? And he’s considered one of the best ever? By whom? What the hell did he do that was so damn great??? I know he helped Montreal win five Stanley Cups in eight years. While impressive, that’s a team accomplishment and by his own admission, he was surrounded by all stars, superstars even, so I don’t know how much he contributed. He did win at least three Vezina Trophies for best goalie, which says something, but even then, he levels criticisms at himself in this book that make you wonder how the hell he won the damn things. He apparently split time with another goalie. He got lit up repeatedly by opposing players. Was he really a money player? Hard to tell from this book. I don’t know. I do know that he didn’t seem to have much of a passion for the game, something he basically admits from the beginning. Hardly cared at all for it. Oh sure, like every Canadian kid, he said he liked to play every day growing up, but unlike every other Canadian kid, he didn’t even grow up playing ICE hockey! He played TENNIS BALL hockey in his back yard! Excuse me, but WTF? Seriously? And this guy didn’t go into the juniors. Instead, he went to an American college, which was highly unusual at the time. Why? I don’t know why. And this is the reason. I didn’t even make it a full 100 pages into the book before I became so disgusted with this wimp of a man, this pathetic excuse for an athlete and a human being that I gave up on this autobiography and am left wondering why this has a 4.09 rating on Goodreads and why I have read all of these five star reviews. Who are these reviewers? Why are they so impressed with this book? I don’t get it. I mean, who plays eight years when they are allegedly at the top of their game and part of a dynasty. He writes that he could see the wheels coming off the Montreal dynasty his last year, so basically he bailed on the team rather than sail through rough waters. Like a real champ. What a winner. Would definitely want him in my foxhole. Like hell, I would! This book was boring, there are hardly anything at all about his games or specific games or anything very sports-specific (although there was insightful analysis of his old coach, Scotty Bowman, that was actually good), it was depressing, it was cold, it felt dead, and I hated it with a passion, perhaps as much as I’ve hated any bio I’ve ever read. I can’t tell you how putrid I think this book is and how unimpressed I am with Ken Dryden the man. Dryden, the player, was a few years before my time, so I can’t say anything about him in that respect. If you want to be impressed with a book’s good reputation, I suppose you could invest in this, but I sure wouldn’t waste my time. Most definitely not recommended under any circumstances!
March 25, 2012
Published in '83, this book assumes that I will have been part of the 70s, part of the 2 channel television world, part of the hockey world. That is a fine assumption at the time. However, as I picked this up as a book that nearly won Canada Reads, that's not good enough. That assumption lay thickly between me and the words of the book. So many passages are just words - names, descriptions, references I don't get.
I wanted to like this book. I wanted to learn to like hockey better. I liked Ken Dryden better, instead. When he was talking about hockey, I was lost for the most part. It just drifted past me. When he talked about The Game, ie, about teams and sports and being an athlete and fans and owners and aging and life, then I was with him.
pg 218 on violence in hockey
"The NHL is wrong....Anger and frustration can be released within the rules, by skating faster, by shooting harder, by doing relentless, dogged violence on an opponent's mind, as Bjorn Borg, Pete Rose, and Bob Gainey do. If Freud was right and anger released is anger spent, then a right hook given is a body-check missed, and by permitting fighting, the NHL discourages determined, inspired play as retaliation."
I wanted to like this book. I wanted to learn to like hockey better. I liked Ken Dryden better, instead. When he was talking about hockey, I was lost for the most part. It just drifted past me. When he talked about The Game, ie, about teams and sports and being an athlete and fans and owners and aging and life, then I was with him.
pg 218 on violence in hockey
"The NHL is wrong....Anger and frustration can be released within the rules, by skating faster, by shooting harder, by doing relentless, dogged violence on an opponent's mind, as Bjorn Borg, Pete Rose, and Bob Gainey do. If Freud was right and anger released is anger spent, then a right hook given is a body-check missed, and by permitting fighting, the NHL discourages determined, inspired play as retaliation."
March 30, 2025
This book has been called one of the best sports books ever written. Author Ken Dryden was a Hall of Fame goalie for the Montreal Canadiens, winning six Stanley Cups. But he may be an even better writer. As with the best sports books, “The Game” talks about simple subjects that run deep, such as leadership, perseverance, and creativity, tying them to his experience as an athlete at the highest level. He also sprinkles in a bit of fascinating Canadian history throughout.
The book does meander all over the place, and leaves out crucial details of his final season before his early retirement at age 30, but there is no denying his abilities as a writer. His description of his own backyard, where he and his brother Dave played hockey with other kids in their Toronto neighborhood, is as good a piece of writing as you will find anywhere. And you don’t even need to be a hockey fan (I am casual at best) to enjoy this excellent book.
The book does meander all over the place, and leaves out crucial details of his final season before his early retirement at age 30, but there is no denying his abilities as a writer. His description of his own backyard, where he and his brother Dave played hockey with other kids in their Toronto neighborhood, is as good a piece of writing as you will find anywhere. And you don’t even need to be a hockey fan (I am casual at best) to enjoy this excellent book.
September 20, 2025
For a book about a sport, this book was also very much NOT about sports; the passage of time on roadtrips and in life, the isolation felt with language barriers, Quebec referendum(s), the continuous chokehold money has on entertainment industries, each chapter brought forth a tasty morsel to chew on.
Incredible writing. Seeing as many people say it’s one of the best sports book ever written, I can say ”Yeah. I get it.”
Incredible writing. Seeing as many people say it’s one of the best sports book ever written, I can say ”Yeah. I get it.”
June 15, 2025
Awesome book. Ken Dryden is extremely wise, insightful, and intelligent and it was very interesting reading of his thoughts and insights on the Montreal dynasty of the 70’s. Many of the things he mused about when writing this book in 1983 are still very evident in sports today.
Very interesting man and a tremendous read.
Very interesting man and a tremendous read.
December 18, 2022
Greatest book on hockey ever written? Probably.
Any hockey fan owes it to themselves to pick this one up. Heck, sports fans in general will find a lot to love here. Dryden has an innate ability to turn the mundane into something beautiful and impactful. While most sports memoirs are able to capture the essence of what it means to play their respective game, few manage to do so with the level of eloquence seen in The Game.
I originally read this years ago but I feel I got far more from the experience upon coming back to it. Now that I’m older and have a changed perspective on the game of hockey - one that has brought me closer to the childhood astonishment and amazement I once had - I’ve become more drawn to Dryden’s poetic prose. There is an articulation to his words and his stories unmatched by virtually all of his contemporaries.
The Game is phenomenal and it will continue to stand the test of time, remaining at the top of the pantheon of books about sports - transcending beyond just the realm of the ice.
Any hockey fan owes it to themselves to pick this one up. Heck, sports fans in general will find a lot to love here. Dryden has an innate ability to turn the mundane into something beautiful and impactful. While most sports memoirs are able to capture the essence of what it means to play their respective game, few manage to do so with the level of eloquence seen in The Game.
I originally read this years ago but I feel I got far more from the experience upon coming back to it. Now that I’m older and have a changed perspective on the game of hockey - one that has brought me closer to the childhood astonishment and amazement I once had - I’ve become more drawn to Dryden’s poetic prose. There is an articulation to his words and his stories unmatched by virtually all of his contemporaries.
The Game is phenomenal and it will continue to stand the test of time, remaining at the top of the pantheon of books about sports - transcending beyond just the realm of the ice.
June 5, 2018
States on the cover, "The Best Hockey Book Ever Written", and lives up to that - easily one of the better books about all sports. The author was a goalie and law student, and his ideas come across quite clearly. The original subtitle was "a thoughtful and provocative look at a life in hockey", and it is that. Recommended, and for a hockey fan highly recommended.
I picked this up last year in a used book shop in B.C. Having read a fair amount of sports books, mostly baseball related, I was eager to check the claim on the cover.
Ideas and reflections are loosely slotted into chapters. These cover the activities of a week in a season of the later career of Ken Dryden, goalie for the Montreal Canadiens. By the second chapter, he is already philosophical, and that is where the real gems emerge.
He examines playing in the years after being an outstanding team (playing against their own record and the expectations of the fans/media/owners far more than playing the rest of the league), how the game has changed for kids (less play time), violence, superstars, and strategy changes through time. Along the way he also introduces his past, his teammates, trainers and coaches. The terminology when he talks about teammates may prove unfamiliar to non-hockey fans, but the rest of the book is quite accessible.
I read the 20th anniversary edition, which contains an additional chapter covering the end of his last year and a little reflection on how the game changed with Gretzky. Even that additional chapter is now 15 years old. Looking forward to reading more by this author!
I picked this up last year in a used book shop in B.C. Having read a fair amount of sports books, mostly baseball related, I was eager to check the claim on the cover.
Ideas and reflections are loosely slotted into chapters. These cover the activities of a week in a season of the later career of Ken Dryden, goalie for the Montreal Canadiens. By the second chapter, he is already philosophical, and that is where the real gems emerge.
He examines playing in the years after being an outstanding team (playing against their own record and the expectations of the fans/media/owners far more than playing the rest of the league), how the game has changed for kids (less play time), violence, superstars, and strategy changes through time. Along the way he also introduces his past, his teammates, trainers and coaches. The terminology when he talks about teammates may prove unfamiliar to non-hockey fans, but the rest of the book is quite accessible.
I read the 20th anniversary edition, which contains an additional chapter covering the end of his last year and a little reflection on how the game changed with Gretzky. Even that additional chapter is now 15 years old. Looking forward to reading more by this author!
July 21, 2018
In one of the greatest sports memoirs across any sport, culture, or generation, legendary goaltender Ken Dryden of the 1970s-era Montreal Canadians takes the reader on a fantastic journey through the life and thinking of a hockey player - especially one as educated and well-versed as Dryden is - in the hit 1983 book “The Game.”
As much as “Ball Four” transformed the world of baseball in fascinating tell-all fashion following its publishing in 1970, so does “The Game” shed light on the realm of professional hockey. Though some parts of the book are slow and bogged down by details rather than one entertaining story after another - as well as highlighting a 1970s hockey team that few modern day readers are even vaguely familiar with - the insight is to die for. From featuring normal locker room banter involving bygone stars of the NHL to sharing his own feelings and motivations in playing hockey for a living, Dryden holds nothing back in exposing the world of our sporting heroes. Whether you were part of a team sport when you were younger or not, I am sure the reader will find several eye-opening narratives in this book, as well as creating a new line of thinking of how to view professional athletes (at least of the pre-free agency era). With more educated and opinionated autobiographies such as Drydens' on the market, society is now better able to appreciate, understand, and relate to the men and women who entertain us in the world of sports.
As much as “Ball Four” transformed the world of baseball in fascinating tell-all fashion following its publishing in 1970, so does “The Game” shed light on the realm of professional hockey. Though some parts of the book are slow and bogged down by details rather than one entertaining story after another - as well as highlighting a 1970s hockey team that few modern day readers are even vaguely familiar with - the insight is to die for. From featuring normal locker room banter involving bygone stars of the NHL to sharing his own feelings and motivations in playing hockey for a living, Dryden holds nothing back in exposing the world of our sporting heroes. Whether you were part of a team sport when you were younger or not, I am sure the reader will find several eye-opening narratives in this book, as well as creating a new line of thinking of how to view professional athletes (at least of the pre-free agency era). With more educated and opinionated autobiographies such as Drydens' on the market, society is now better able to appreciate, understand, and relate to the men and women who entertain us in the world of sports.
January 28, 2012
"A time capsule buried at Maple Leaf Gardens in 1931 and revealed on Thursday (January 26, 2012) contains an NHL rule book, a municipal code, financial information on the team and a tiny carved ivory elephant of mysterious origin."(1)
Hockey in all its forms, in all its lore, never fails to captivate many Canadians. But do we listen carefully to those voices from the distant (1931 NHL rule book ...) and more recent past?
The Game by Ken Dryden, first published in 1983, offers enduring contributions to sport literature, non-fiction and Canadian literature. Considering it comes straight from one of the most accomplished players of the sport (written by him, not mediated through an interviewer or ghost writer), the book intrigues and challenges because it's not entirely a celebration of the sport of hockey, but a reverential and at times very troubled examination of it. The Game is neither a light nor quick read, but it's an absorbing and thoughtful reflection on the game of hockey and the experience of being part of a team. The book will fascinate fans and students of the sport as well as those interested in the history, psychology and national resonances and significance of this particular sport.
Read my complete review here: http://bookgaga.posterous.com/the-gam...
Hockey in all its forms, in all its lore, never fails to captivate many Canadians. But do we listen carefully to those voices from the distant (1931 NHL rule book ...) and more recent past?
The Game by Ken Dryden, first published in 1983, offers enduring contributions to sport literature, non-fiction and Canadian literature. Considering it comes straight from one of the most accomplished players of the sport (written by him, not mediated through an interviewer or ghost writer), the book intrigues and challenges because it's not entirely a celebration of the sport of hockey, but a reverential and at times very troubled examination of it. The Game is neither a light nor quick read, but it's an absorbing and thoughtful reflection on the game of hockey and the experience of being part of a team. The book will fascinate fans and students of the sport as well as those interested in the history, psychology and national resonances and significance of this particular sport.
Read my complete review here: http://bookgaga.posterous.com/the-gam...
February 7, 2020
In the times when former sports athletes write or have a ghost writer write their memories of faded glory on the epic field of sport with the singular possessive 'i' being used some many times that one wonders if the autobiography of said sports athlete is pumped up with hot air to match their inflated egos.
Along comes a shocker of a sports autobiography written in a narrative style by not only a athlete but a hockey goalie. Such a drastic change from the bombastic attitude of the other athlete autobiography. This one feels rreal. It is written to show what being a not only a sports athlete entails but one that just happens to be on a team that is the most respected and most veried hockey francisies ever. How the game, ownership, even stadiums have changed.
Ken Dryden shows how an athlete lives by the schedule and how he struggles with married life as well as his own struggles with the team and management. I saw a documentary on the Esposito brothers. Phil Esposito was married and divorced twice during his playing days.
This is no index to show what awards Ken Dryden won nor how many games he played or things that puff oneself up.
This book should be given out to young people who mistaken believe that being a sports athlete is all glamour. Unfortunately the young people are pumped up like the other sports autobiography.
Along comes a shocker of a sports autobiography written in a narrative style by not only a athlete but a hockey goalie. Such a drastic change from the bombastic attitude of the other athlete autobiography. This one feels rreal. It is written to show what being a not only a sports athlete entails but one that just happens to be on a team that is the most respected and most veried hockey francisies ever. How the game, ownership, even stadiums have changed.
Ken Dryden shows how an athlete lives by the schedule and how he struggles with married life as well as his own struggles with the team and management. I saw a documentary on the Esposito brothers. Phil Esposito was married and divorced twice during his playing days.
This is no index to show what awards Ken Dryden won nor how many games he played or things that puff oneself up.
This book should be given out to young people who mistaken believe that being a sports athlete is all glamour. Unfortunately the young people are pumped up like the other sports autobiography.
March 13, 2022
Dryden's writing is not without its cynicism, but for the most part what he writes comes across as genuine and that cynicism is just a part of how Dryden viewed the game (and much of what surrounded it).
When Dryden is writing about his teammates (and other players) it is raw, often harsh, and wonderful. Their character and charisma leap off the page and you get a great sense of what this team was in the 70s and what the game meant to them. However, it isn't quite the same with Dryden regarding himself. Maybe he's holding back, maybe it's deliberate, or maybe he just isn't as interested in himself as he is in others. He writes about his actions and feelings, but something seems missing at times, a slight disconnect.
And then there's the game itself. This snapshot of hockey is more than just that, it's a lens into life on the road, into the lifestyle of sports fame, the change of sport from pastime into business, of impostor syndrome creeping in, and of making big career decisions. It's of the shake up caused by a trade, the pre-game nerves, the comradery (and hazing) of the dressing room, of what it means to be a Canadian, of what it means to be a Canadien, and in general a time machine into an exceptional, important era of hockey.
A genuinely engaging read.
When Dryden is writing about his teammates (and other players) it is raw, often harsh, and wonderful. Their character and charisma leap off the page and you get a great sense of what this team was in the 70s and what the game meant to them. However, it isn't quite the same with Dryden regarding himself. Maybe he's holding back, maybe it's deliberate, or maybe he just isn't as interested in himself as he is in others. He writes about his actions and feelings, but something seems missing at times, a slight disconnect.
And then there's the game itself. This snapshot of hockey is more than just that, it's a lens into life on the road, into the lifestyle of sports fame, the change of sport from pastime into business, of impostor syndrome creeping in, and of making big career decisions. It's of the shake up caused by a trade, the pre-game nerves, the comradery (and hazing) of the dressing room, of what it means to be a Canadian, of what it means to be a Canadien, and in general a time machine into an exceptional, important era of hockey.
A genuinely engaging read.
January 29, 2008
The Game is considered by many to be the greatest book about hockey ever written, and I can see why. Dryden’s thought is insightful, reflective, and intelligent; his prose clear, effectively detailed, and well structured. I found myself making a lot of thoughtful, audible noise while reading this book. It worked very well for, and taught me a lot about a game I already love and feel close to, though I have never played it (and, as such, sadly, will always feel it is outside me). I did find that after about 30 or so pages of reading a day, I got sort of bored and had to stop. Best in small doses, I think this is a book I will reread in a few years. And Dryden’s descriptions and commentary on Scotty Bowman are amazing. I grew up watching the guy coach the Red Wings, and got more out of
his description of Bowman than anyone else.
his description of Bowman than anyone else.
March 15, 2019
It’s hard to explain exactly why I believe this to be the greatest book on sport ever written. Maybe it’s due to how it effortlessly stretches beyond the regular bounds of its genre without losing sight of its central focus. Maybe it’s how Dryden’s insights, and writing, stand up through the decades. Maybe it’s something else entirely. A truly unique book by an unique human being.
March 19, 2023
Eh Terrible writer, seems like a nice guy, in depth descriptions of everything else but hockey. Wasted a half a page describing filling out deposit slips at a bank.
August 16, 2023
Probably the most introspective and one of the smartest I’ve ever read. The last chapter made me cry
May 7, 2024
It’s a five star book when he’s writing about his hockey experiences, but he loves to go off on tangents which I didn’t find particularly interesting and these tangents seem to dominate the book.
September 25, 2025
OK, this is a 3.5 rounded up to a 4. For full transparency, I was a teenager in the 1970’s and idolized the Montreal Canadiens and Ken Dryden was one of my heroes. In fact, I was at game 5 of the 1979 Stanley Cup finals when Montreal won the Cup and it was Dryden’s last game.
I picked up this book immediately after he recently passed. There is certainly a lot of great memories for me reading this book as he talks about the Canadiens, the players, the history, the comradery both on and off the ice, etc. However; I found Ken’s writing style to be sophisticated in a “clunky” way. When you consider that he’s combining his experience as one of the best NHL goaltenders in history, on one of the biggest dynasties ever, and also being a lawyer, then it makes sense. I did slog through this, and did enjoy it, but it took some effort at times.
I think a true sports fan, particularly an NHL hockey fan, and one who was younger during the time Ken writes about, would certainly enjoy this book. For me, it was a nice walk (or skate) down memory lane. Thank you, Ken, for all the great moments and memories you provided me during my teenage years. Rest in peace.
I picked up this book immediately after he recently passed. There is certainly a lot of great memories for me reading this book as he talks about the Canadiens, the players, the history, the comradery both on and off the ice, etc. However; I found Ken’s writing style to be sophisticated in a “clunky” way. When you consider that he’s combining his experience as one of the best NHL goaltenders in history, on one of the biggest dynasties ever, and also being a lawyer, then it makes sense. I did slog through this, and did enjoy it, but it took some effort at times.
I think a true sports fan, particularly an NHL hockey fan, and one who was younger during the time Ken writes about, would certainly enjoy this book. For me, it was a nice walk (or skate) down memory lane. Thank you, Ken, for all the great moments and memories you provided me during my teenage years. Rest in peace.
June 18, 2021
This book was released almost forty years ago. I remember the interviews that Ken Dryden did on TV when it came out. I suppose it’s a bit of an omission that I haven’t read it till now, though I do date myself with the statement. Oh well, time moves relentlessly on.
What can you say about Ken Dryden? He may be the most articulate, well-spoken, and capable writer to ever play in the NHL. This is an extremely thoughtful meditation on the game of hockey and the state of the National Hockey League, both at the time it was written and twenty years later when the 20th-anniversary edition came out.
He really does take you into the dressing room and give you a feel for what it’s like to play the game at the highest levels. Not just to play the game, but to live the life. Then he has lots of very interesting and insightful things to say about it.
I wonder if there’ll be a 40th-anniversary edition. I might consider it. I’d be interested to hear his thoughts on the last twenty years.
This was definitely worth my time.
What can you say about Ken Dryden? He may be the most articulate, well-spoken, and capable writer to ever play in the NHL. This is an extremely thoughtful meditation on the game of hockey and the state of the National Hockey League, both at the time it was written and twenty years later when the 20th-anniversary edition came out.
He really does take you into the dressing room and give you a feel for what it’s like to play the game at the highest levels. Not just to play the game, but to live the life. Then he has lots of very interesting and insightful things to say about it.
I wonder if there’ll be a 40th-anniversary edition. I might consider it. I’d be interested to hear his thoughts on the last twenty years.
This was definitely worth my time.
November 17, 2020
For me, books where sports legends talk about their legacy in said sport (particularly in hockey and in some occasions baseball) is very much on the level of comfort food reading. I’m pretty well invested when it comes to discussing the game of hockey, and The Game handles it very well. I’m not sure I’d call it the greatest hockey book of all time, as the cover suggested (Gretzky/Mclellan’s 99: Stories of the game still holds a very special place in my heart). It’s a little shaggy at times, some parts don’t hold up as well as others. Admittedly part of this could be when I got into hockey, Montreal wasn’t really the presence it was in Dryden’s era. I was more familiar, growing up, of Gretzky’s Oilers era, which may be a reason I lean more towards 99 than The Game. All that being said, I enjoyed this book, learning about one of the greatest dynasty in the league. I definitely recommend it for the hockey enthusiasts, it’s well worth your time.
April 1, 2024
3.75 stars. Really interesting observations by a former goalie of the Montreal Canadians loosely covering 10 days in the 1979 season. Dryden is a somewhat unexpected pro athlete in that he earned and held a law degree while playing NHL hockey and even took a year off to work on it (at times he sounded so detached from hockey that it seemed surprising that he was actually one of the greatest goalies of all time). He provides insight on team and star player dynamics, the state and trends of professional hockey, and even French-Canadian political upheaval. The book lost my interest somewhat near the end when he got deep in the weeds of Canadian vs Russian hockey strategy, which felt a little bit out of place. The rest of the book was fairly accessible to the casual fan.
***Also, even at the end I still struggle to distinguish who’s who between Lapointe, Lemaire, Larouche, Laroque, and Lafleur.
***Also, even at the end I still struggle to distinguish who’s who between Lapointe, Lemaire, Larouche, Laroque, and Lafleur.
December 10, 2019
For me a tough read as I am not really a sports fan. But I have met Ken Dryden a few times and we have a mutual friend who died last year of cancer and I wanted to read this book for Jim. I found certain chapters easier to read than others. Saturday was great. Ken writes about his peers and always finds ways to compliment them while still giving the straight story, or so it seems. He is an eloquent writer and describes events so clearly, often with strong emotions. My friend was so proud that he grew up with Ken Dryden and proudly talked about his friendship. No name dropping. Just fond memories of childhood. Thanks for a great sports read. I started out on my iPad. Big mistake as I hate reading on it. But had downloaded the book years ago when I gave it to my nephew. I eventually got the 30th anniversary book out of the library. It helped a bit and I also had the benefit of a few extra chapters including 2013 - The Game Goes On. Thanks for helping me to understand "The Game".
July 26, 2020
The Game was a good read about all things in life and not just about hockey. It is interesting that it talked about everything the game is from players and teams to strategy and even the economics of it. What struck me the most is the author's reflections about life choices and is best expressed in a Henri Richard quote near the end of the book, "It was a dream, and everything I dreamed came true. Now my dream is finished. That's a new life for me. Because what I do now, what I keep on doing is something I never dreamed of."
April 29, 2023
This should have been required reading for me when I started covering hockey full time more than a decade ago, but I fucked up. It’s a 40-year old book but Ken Dryden writes about hockey better than any actual hockey journalist I’ve ever read. Guess it helps to be a former player and also a Cornell graduate. But seriously. The “Saturday” chapter that describes a Red Wings/Canadiens game in its entirety is some of the best sports writing in history.
Not sure what else to say about this one other than if you have any interest in hockey whatsoever you absolutely should have read this already.
Not sure what else to say about this one other than if you have any interest in hockey whatsoever you absolutely should have read this already.
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