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<\/p>\nDryden, who won the Stanley Cup six times with the Montreal Canadiens in the 1970s, died of cancer last Friday. He was 78. <\/p>\n
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The NHL team confirmed his death early Saturday.<\/p>\n
Over four decades after its initial release, \u201cThe Game\u201d remains a quintessential piece of Canadian sports writing.<\/p>\n
Considered by literary and hockey observers to be one of the greatest hockey books ever written, Dryden\u2019s 248-page effort from 1983 also sits in the upper echelon of preeminent sports books.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Game\u201d goes behind the curtain of the Habs\u2019 dynasty and into the mind of one of the sport\u2019s all-time greats. <\/p>\n
With graceful prose and a simplistic yet mesmerizing style, Dryden detailed a day-by-day account of a week in his last pro season. <\/p>\n
It still packs an impactful punch today.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would describe it as the story of hockey, almost like an analytical, sociological, intellectual treatise on hockey,\u201d Canadian author and journalist Roy MacGregor said Tuesday from Ottawa. \u201cAnd yet it has the common touch, which makes it accessible to everyone. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd you read it and you enjoy it and perhaps you\u2019re not even aware of how deeply it\u2019s touched you if you are a hockey player, a hockey fan, a hockey observer. It\u2019s just magical.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bill Simmons, founder and managing director of The Ringer sports and pop culture website, wrote the foreword for the book\u2019s 2013 edition.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe writing is so good, so detailed, so intense, so thoughtful \u2026 you can\u2019t even believe it\u2019s coming from a professional athlete, much less one of the finest at his particular position,\u201d Simmons wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Game\u201d was a Governor General\u2019s Literary Award finalist in the non-fiction English category in 1983. <\/p>\n
The 30th anniversary release included a new chapter on Dryden\u2019s day with the Cup and his travels, interactions, memories and celebrations.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that\u2019s one of the things about the book (and) why it\u2019s endured is that it\u2019s really about any team,\u201d Wilson said from Hamilton. \u201cBy telling the specific, you hear and you get the universal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilson recalled that Dryden was \u201cnot jaded at all\u201d by the book\u2019s milestone status, adding he seemed genuinely excited when the new edition came out. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that he could write about and tell the story about the hometown where his father was born and playing in the backyard,\u201d he said. \u201cAll of that stuff, it felt really important to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
After retiring from the NHL while in his prime, Dryden went on to become a lawyer, businessman, politician and teacher. <\/p>\n
He also continued to write books and tackled a number of subjects inside and outside the hockey world.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was special,\u201d said retired Boston Globe sports columnist Bob Ryan. \u201cI mean, God, some people are just different and better than the rest of us, and he\u2019s one of them. Period.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unlike many hockey books that are ghostwritten or offer an observer\u2019s thoughts on a player, team or league, \u201cThe Game\u201d was from a participant\u2019s perspective. It had a style and feeling all its own, said hockey historian Kevin Shea. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou could kind of tell that every word was measured, every sentence was measured,\u201d he said from Toronto.<\/p>\n
MacGregor, who worked with Dryden on a few projects over the years, said \u201cThe Game\u201d was more thoughtful than any hockey book that had been written before it or since. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy line always was it\u2019s as if his brain lives outside of his skull and you get to watch it trip and dance and move on to all kinds of different subjects,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can actually see him and feel him getting excited as he\u2019s tracing down an idea. It\u2019s really something fascinating to watch. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always been intrigued by it. And of course, we\u2019ll all miss it.\u201d<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2025. <\/p>\n
Gregory Strong, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dryden, who won the Stanley Cup six times with the Montreal Canadiens in the 1970s, died of cancer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132158,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[353,879,49,48,2467,75,2461,2468,2460,2462,2463,44,2464,2465,2466,82],"class_list":["post-132157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-books","tag-breaking-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-central-vancouver-island","tag-entertainment","tag-nanaimo","tag-nanaimo-breaking-news","tag-nanaimo-news","tag-nanaimo-news-now","tag-nanaimonewsnow","tag-news","tag-oceanside","tag-parksville","tag-qualicum","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}