He´s so right. The russians showed that there is another way to play the game at the highest level. Thats why we now can enjoy the best of two worlds both in the NHL and internationally.
Mr. Dryden was always more cerebral and articulate than the average athlete....light years ahead of the average professional hockey player of that time....most of whom stopped going to school at age 14 or 15.
Regardless of the final result, the Soviets won in Canada and the Canadians won in Moscow. And the biggest winner overall was the game of hockey itself.
Few people today would even remember that 1972 series, had it gone the way everyone predicted (an 8-game sweep by the vaunted NHLers). Today's generation just doesn't realize how big an unknown the USSR was back then. A closed society, a rigid political system, and a hockey program (and players) we knew nothing about. But the way we came back to win it -- and the way a guy like Dryden, whose style was not at all tuned to the pass-pass-pass-score system employed by the Russians, adapted and won -- is why it lives on forever to a Canadian. Ken didn't have a good series -- but he was big at the end when it counted. Great interview.
He's absolutely right. Not even a year prior, he and Tony O Esposito, were playing on opposite sides, Montreal and Chicago, respectively, in the 1971Stanley Cup, and, then, to see them as The Goalie Tandem on the Same Team/A Dream Team, was a Great Thing
As a American I have the utmost respect for Ken Dryden! Man is brilliant in many ways other than hockey. You can tell by the way he always speaks! Could of been a politician if he wanted to
Great humanitarian read his book Showdown at the Summit greatest hockey book ever written takes you inside the Team Canada team and the personal struggles they had but prevailed in the end
Thanks for the correction. He was steady in that game, but I don't recall him being spectacular i.e. on the level Tretiak was. Dryden's overall performance against Soviet teams was very disappointing.
R. Crompton: I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that no team sports player has ever faced more pressure than Dryden did in Game 8 of the Summit Series. How was this not a "creditable" performance by him? And was Tretiak's Game 8 performance NOT creditable? (He let in one more goal, after all.) Dryden was also solid in the NHL's Game 1 win of the Challenge Cup in 1979.
Canada did not win that series. The Soviets won because they scored more goals. It was never established beforehand that in an 8 game series neither team could win as it was an exhibition of them vs us. At the last game the soviets eased off in the last period as thy knew they had scored more goals. It was in fact a terrible loss for Canada due to Canada's style of play vs the soviet style. Ken Dryden was horrible compared to Tretiak. If you watched that series it was just a terrible display of sportsmanship from both sides. The one thing good that came out of it was that Canada had to start developing more skilled players as they kept coming over and beating the hell out of Canadian teams. It was the best lesson the NHL ever learned.
indoctus41 The soviets agreed to play Canada to establish goodwill and to learn from the NHL style of play. Both sides agreed 4 exhibition games in each country would be played. I have never heard of any organization, NHL or otherwise that would play an eight game series to establish a champion! Why did they not have a way to establish a champion beforehand then? The reason was that everyone thought Canada would win each game by a big margin but they didn't and as time wore on and Canada began losing games they need a "cause" Soviet sports officials established that they had won because they had scored more goals. Canadians saw it otherwise. By the way Mr Ken Dryden was a sieve during that series. He was horrid. Tretiak showed us the first butterfly style of goaltending and he was fantastic.
A key point to remember is that this wasn't team Canada, it was team NHL: no Bobby Hull, no Gordie Howe, no Garry Cheevers. Furthermore, the Soviets trained for years (literally) for this series, whereas this was an NHL training camp. Canada was then, and continues to be, by far the better hockey nation.
