{"id":487181,"date":"2022-08-23T17:52:06","date_gmt":"2022-08-23T14:52:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/qa-ken-dryden-on-the-summit-series-50-years-later\/"},"modified":"2022-08-23T17:52:06","modified_gmt":"2022-08-23T14:52:06","slug":"qa-ken-dryden-on-the-summit-series-50-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/qa-ken-dryden-on-the-summit-series-50-years-later\/","title":{"rendered":"#Q&#038;A: Ken Dryden on the Summit Series 50 years later"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_84 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a246845d1bc6\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a246845d1bc6\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/qa-ken-dryden-on-the-summit-series-50-years-later\/#%E2%80%9CQ_A_Ken_Dryden_on_the_Summit_Series_50_years_later%E2%80%9D\" >&#8220;Q&#038;A: Ken Dryden on the Summit Series 50 years later&#8221;<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h1><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"%E2%80%9CQ_A_Ken_Dryden_on_the_Summit_Series_50_years_later%E2%80%9D\"><\/span>&#8220;Q&#038;A: Ken Dryden on the Summit Series 50 years later&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h1>\n<div>\n                                                                        <i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ken Dryden, 74, is a lawyer, businessman, author and former federal cabinet minister. But what Canadians most remember him for is his Hall of Fame career in hockey. What Dryden recalls most vividly from his storied goaltending tenure with the Montreal Canadiens is not the six Stanley Cup championships in eight seasons, but his performance in the Summit <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/watch-movies-tv-seriess\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"8\" title=\"Watch Movies &amp; TV Series\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Series<\/a>\u2014the iconic eight-<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/game\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"7\" title=\"Game\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">game<\/a> exhibition match up in 1972 between Canada and the Soviet Union which celebrates its 50th anniversary next month. In his latest book, <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Series: What I Remember, What It Felt Like, What It Feels Like Now,<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Dryden delves into his memory to offer a visceral and evocative recapture of an event that riveted Canadians\u2019 attention like little else before or after. He spoke with <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Maclean\u2019s<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> about the legacy of the series and why it still matters today. \u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>Maclean\u2019s: There is a key statistic you mention more than once in the book: 16 million of 22 million Canadians watched the final game of the Summit Series (on September 28, 1972).<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>Ken Dryden:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> That tells the story better than anything for a game that was on during work hours and school hours. Every hockey fan has their favourite memories\u2014could be the 1987 Canada Cup with both Gretzky and Lemieux, or the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. So my challenge was, how do you get somebody who has other reference points to understand the 1972 series actually was different for Canadians? The only way that I could think of was to put them right into the moment. This wasn\u2019t going to be a book where I interview players, go online, do all kinds of other research. No, it\u2019s either in me or it isn\u2019t in me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>You simply pulled this from your memory as best you could?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes. When I finally decided to do it\u2014I had been asked many times before, 25th anniversary 40th anniversary\u2014it was almost a writing frenzy. Within three weeks I was at the end, but I didn\u2019t really know what the end was.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Do you mean that after going through the first parts of the subtitle\u2014<\/b><b><i>What I Remember, What It Felt Like<\/i><\/b><b>\u2014you were uncertain about the third, <\/b><b><i>What It Feels Like Now<\/i><\/b><b>? Did writing the book change your thoughts, your memories?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The act of writing means discovering something all the time, that\u2019s why you do it. Until the end, I was trying to put my finger on why it mattered so, until I got to this: the experience was so utterly personal for the players stepping onto the ice in Montreal on Sept. 2, 1972. My story starts with the Penticton Vees winning the world championship in 1955 when I was seven and then the Russian domination of international hockey that began in 1963.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Phil Esposito would have another story, and Paul Henderson another still. But they were the same essentially. We were the originators of hockey, the world\u2019s best. That\u2019s why 16 of 22 million watched, because we had to prove it and because it was personal for the fans, too. That\u2019s why 3,000 Canadians showed up in Moscow, when Canadians weren\u2019t big <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/trip-and-travel\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"10\" title=\"Trip &amp; Travel\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">travel<\/a>lers\u2014sure as heck not to the Soviet Union.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>I thought you captured the Canadians abroad quite well, partly because you sat among them when Tony Esposito was in goal. They had a feeling about hockey and a feeling about being Canadian, and an indefinable feeling those two things were intertwined.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That\u2019s right. I think that is what it was, just so utterly personal for us all.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Your greatest regret was that, as part of the team, you were not part of the national experience?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Exactly! I would\u2019ve loved being in Montreal watching the series. I would\u2019ve gone nuts watching. We players each had our own go-nuts experience, but none of us had all of it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Despite your participation, you often didn\u2019t have a very good perch\u2014when Paul Henderson scored the most famous goal in Canadian history, winning the series 34 seconds before the buzzer, you were 180 feet away.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I remember the red light or Henderson\u2019s stick in the air, I don\u2019t know which came first. I remember being at centre ice\u2014I don\u2019t remember how I got there\u2014my whoops and hollers. But I didn\u2019t see the goal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>The same goes for the most famous non-game moment in the series when, after the crushing loss in Vancouver, Phil Esposito delivered a defiant speech to angry fans.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We didn\u2019t hear it, we didn\u2019t see it, we were in the dressing room. It had no effect on us, but what I hadn\u2019t thought about before is its very large effect on the Canadian public.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Everything that had led up to it\u2014press and fans on about overpaid, over-privileged, out-of-shape players getting all this money for playing a kid\u2019s game and they don\u2019t care\u2014and, then all of a sudden, Esposito is on the ice doing this interview. And it\u2019s like, holy\u2026this guy cares. Look at his face, look at the sweat pouring down, listen to his words. The eloquence of it, talking back over himself, interrupting himself, reinforcing the emotion of what he was expressing, I think from that point on, the series was much more us-and-us than us-and-them in our relationship with the fans.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>You do write about the most controversial moment, when Bobby Clarke delivered a two-handed slash to the Soviets\u2019 most dangerous forward, Valery Kharlamov, fracturing his ankle in game six. But you refuse to pass judgment on it.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, I don\u2019t know that any of us know entirely what we will do in certain circumstances under pressure. I just don\u2019t know what I would do.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Did Kharlamov\u2019s hobbling affect the series?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There\u2019s another moment, also in the sixth game, where the puck went past me and right back out in front. Did it go in the net or not? I don\u2019t know. What I do know is that it h<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>ened in the second period when we were ahead, and the Russian team did not score in the third period. They had their own fate in their hands, and whether that puck went in or it didn\u2019t go in, they had lots of time to change that game.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Same with Kharlamov. Lots of things happen in hockey. Players get injured, or they go into slumps. It was up to the Soviet team to find an answer if Kharlamov wasn\u2019t able to play, and they didn\u2019t find an answer.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>It\u2019s game eight\u2014the decider\u2014and you\u2019re going to be in the net. The day before, when you wake up, your legs feel like jelly, because you know that the day after the game you could wake up the most hated man in Canada. An excruciating wait time for you.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I\u2019m a sports fan. I<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> knew all about Bobby Thomson, who hit the famous \u201cshot heard round the world,\u201d but I also remember Ralph Branca, who threw the pitch that became that home run\u2014and what happened to his career after that. This was going to be the biggest stakes game that had ever been played in hockey. Something like that, usually there\u2019s going to be a hero, and usually there\u2019s going to be a goat. That was what was at stake.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Then Henderson scored, and all was well. You recall a dressing room awash with celebration and \u201cdeep relief,\u201d a feeling like being shot at and missed. The series opened up new modes of play for Canadian hockey and gave this country its great sporting opponent.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Having that great opponent is crucial to everything, to your own team\u2019s greatness and to your emotions and memories. What are you going to remember 20, 40 years later? I think there were five or six players from the Montreal Canadiens. We all won piles of Stanley Cups, with most of us playing much more prominent roles than we did in the \u201872 series.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So why is it the absolute favourite, the most vivid memory for us and the other team members and even the Soviet players? How can it be that way for them? They won all kinds of Olympic gold medals and world championships. They won them, they lost this. It goes back to the great opponent. That is what generates the moment and generates the memory, the sustaining memory that lasts.<\/span><\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Series: What I Remember, What It Felt Like, What It Feels Like Now is available now. <\/span><\/i><br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-sizes=\"auto\" class=\"aligncenter size-featured-image-portrait wp-image-1239241 lazyload\" src=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/913i-h5VibL-300x400.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"400\"\/><\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async defer crossorigin=\"anonymous\" src=\"https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">News<\/a> articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/general\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">General category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/culture\/qa-ken-dryden-on-the-summit-series-50-years-later\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Q&#038;A: Ken Dryden on the Summit Series 50 years later&#8221; Ken Dryden, 74, is a lawyer, businessman, author and former federal cabinet minister. But what Canadians most remember him for is his Hall of Fame career in hockey. What Dryden recalls most vividly from his storied goaltending tenure with the Montreal Canadiens is not the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":487182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/913i-h5VibL-300x400.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[71363,67831,132581,1931,132582],"class_list":["post-487181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-anniversary","tag-hockey","tag-ken-dryden","tag-sports","tag-summit-series"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}