“It’s magic,” he said of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. “You’re going back-to-back with games every night. It’s amazing. It’s almost as if, while there are all these games, there’s one long continuous game.
“Each exciting moment of one comes to feel as if it’s part of an exciting moment of the next and the next and the next … you end up reacting as if it’s one game, all of these things that are happening in one game that’s going on night after night.”
Though the Canadiens had a special place in his heart, he didn’t expect to be pulling for any team in particular.
“There are certain teams that I have a certain affection for and in some cases a big affection, but I end up really kind of hoping for the team that deserves to win,” he said.
“It becomes clear with each game in a series who is really earning it. There are very few teams that I really don’t like, there are very few that I really, really like a lot. I can come to like, a lot, a team that’s really earning it, even a team that I have no history with at all.
“Whoever will win the Stanley Cup will have earned it,” Dryden said, the Florida Panthers ultimately bound for their second consecutive championship. “That’s why you play the game. The players are going to determine it. I’m not going to determine it with whatever I think or do with any fantasy league.
“It’s in their hands and those hands are terrific and exciting and competitive. Whoever makes it to the end is going to have completely earned and deserved it.”
It was classic Ken Dryden, not a simple opinion casually shared. He watched his final Stanley Cup Playoffs as he played the game and had lived his full, remarkable 78 years — with insight and depth and a unique point of view, life qualities for which he’ll always be remembered.
Top photo: Ken Dryden early in his Canadiens career, watching a puck fly to the corner during a Montreal Forum game.