{"id":670738,"date":"2026-05-14T16:24:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T16:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/670738\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T16:24:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T16:24:11","slug":"oren-safdies-beyond-ken-dryden-pay-homage-to-habs-goalie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/670738\/","title":{"rendered":"Oren Safdie’s Beyond Ken Dryden pay homage to Habs goalie"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author Oren Safdie grew up in Montreal obsessed, like so many kids here in the \u201970s, by those great Montreal Canadiens teams of that golden era. His favourite player was the legendary goalie Ken Dryden, who died last fall<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Safdie\u2019s enthusiasm as a youngster for the Habs is one of the main themes in his new book Beyond Ken Dryden, a memoir just launched by Montreal-based Linda Leith Publishing. But it\u2019s just as much about how that fandom was his way of dealing with the collapse of his parents\u2019 marriage during the 1970s. His parents are renowned architect Moshe Safdie and Nina Nusynowicz.<\/p>\n

Safdie, who has lived in the U.S. for decades, has written a number of plays and also penned the screenplay for the 1998 film You Can Thank Me Later. He actually wrote Beyond Ken Dryden first as a play, which was produced at the Fringe Festival here in 2024, but he felt the story should be told in fuller detail in book form.<\/p>\n

In a recent interview at an N.D.G. caf\u00e9, Safdie admitted he lost touch with the Canadiens for a while and is only now renewing his passion for the team he loved back in the day.<\/p>\n

\"OrenIn the days of Ken Dryden, \u201cit was rare that a player would be traded and you could really feel that the players were part of the community,\u201d says author Oren Safdie. Dave Sidaway \/ Montreal Gazette<\/p>\n

\u201cI went to the first game at the Bell Centre and something died for me back then,\u201d Safdie said. \u201cThe team, and many hockey teams since then, were trading players (all the time) and with free agency and all that, you could never feel that there was a unit you could latch onto. That\u2019s what I write about in the book. In those days it was rare that a player would be traded and you could really feel that the players were part of the community. You could root for them and know they wouldn\u2019t be gone tomorrow. But now I think we\u2019re back to the fundamentals. You build from the ground up.\u201d<\/p>\n

He is referring to the current Canadiens management team of Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes, who are crafting the team by drafting key players and hanging on to them for the long term. For the first time maybe in decades, this Canadiens team is built around a core of young players \u2014 Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Juraj Slafkovsky and Lane Hutson \u2014 who look likely to be wearing the bleu-blanc-rouge for years to come and also happen to be exciting star players. Safdie also loves that there is such a strong bond between these players. It\u2019s often said they\u2019re like a family, and they are, as corny as it sounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are falling in love with this team because they all love each other,\u201d said Safdie. \u201cThey\u2019re such great personalities and they love the city. It\u2019s a love affair, which I don\u2019t think is something that\u2019s existed for many many years. It\u2019s creating a sense of community. It\u2019s more important than the game. Back then the team was even more ingrained in the community because so many of the players were from Quebec.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turns out the starting point for writing Beyond Ken Dryden was not the legendary Montreal Canadiens goalie. That came later.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started out thinking I wanted to write about my childhood and the thing that really dominated my life at the time was the breakup of my family, which took pretty much the whole decade of the \u201970s,\u201d said Safdie. \u201cThen I started making connections. (I thought) Well if it was so miserable, why do you remember it as the best time of your life? And there were other things happening other than my family. The province was splitting up. I remember in the third grade I came to school and half my class had moved to Toronto. That was traumatic. Some of my best friends. My family was falling apart. And the province was like, \u2018Are we moving? Are we not moving?\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n

Then he started to think of the role of the Canadiens in his life at that time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought one of the things that held my life together, and maybe the province\u2019s, (was the Canadiens),\u201d said Safdie. \u201cThat all of this squabbling between French and English, nobody really cared when the Canadiens were winning. And they won year after year. These are French players and English players together. Nobody had any problem with that. Kind of like now, nobody has any problem that two of the best players (Cole Caufield and Lane Hutson) are American. All nationalities dissipate when you\u2019re on the same team, which I find quite funny and ironic. It\u2019s the big equalizer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AOren Safdie joined Habs fans from Moncton at the Bell Centre on April 24. \u201cAll nationalities dissipate when you\u2019re on the same team, which I find quite funny and ironic,\u201d Safdie says. Dave Sidaway \/ Montreal Gazette<\/p>\n

But ultimately the book is Safdie\u2019s story, not the story of the Canadiens.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s personal and I\u2019ve always written quite personal stories in my plays and my films,\u201d said Safdie. \u201cIt\u2019s got me into trouble before, but it\u2019s also the only way I know how to write with any sort of passion. This is about establishing history through my eyes as I saw it. It was important for me to claim my history. I think that was part of the drive to write this.\u201d<\/p>\n

bkelly@postmedia.com<\/a><\/p>\n

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