Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - The Life and Legacy of Ken Dryden: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1758

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

In this 1758th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Steve Paikin, Bruce Dowbiggin and James Maloney about the life and legacy of Ken Dryden. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, the Waterfront BIA, Blue Sky Agency and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail].

Do you ever think back on the series and just shake your head and something so improbable? I mean, it went absolutely the way it shouldn't have gone, right from the first game of the series, right down to the last 34 seconds. I mean, did you ever have a feeling that there's some kind of a sense of destiny that's involved in all that? Welcome. Welcome to episode of Toronto where you want to get the city-liked. Proudly brought to you by the new and improved Toronto-Miked Patreon. Go to patreon.com slash Toronto Mike to become a member today. by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery, who believes in supporting communities, good times, and brewing amazing beer.

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Create sanctuary within your workspace. Recyclemyelectronics.ca. Committing to our planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past. And Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921. Joining me today to discuss the life and legacy of Ken Dryden, it's the host of the Paken podcast, Steve Paken.

How you doing, Steve? Excellent, Mike. Happy to be with you, although wish it were happier occasion. The author, well, prolific author, really, and the man behind Not the Public Broadcaster.com, actually in the basement with me right now, it's Bruce Dobigan. How you doing, Bruce? Good to be here.

And making his Toronto Mike debut, he's actually in a hotel room in Edmonton, Alberta right now. It's the member of Parliament for Atobico Lakeshore. Welcome to Toronto Mike, James Maloney. Thanks, Mike. Thrill to be here. I wish my first time here was a happier subject matter, but it's an honor to be with you guys. Well, I'm glad all three of you are here. Now, I want to hear from all three of you.

I'm sure that won't be a challenge. But much like our very own Steve Paken here, Ken Dryden was Hamilton born, but raised in James your district, good old Atobicoe. Where do we begin with a man who, you know, I'm a little bit younger than you three, but when I look at the life of Ken Dryden, it's almost like he lived five prolific amazing lives. Like there's so much meat on that bones, but where does your experience with Ken Dryden begin, Bruce? I well in my column today I write about it and for me Ken was kind of the 1970s version of what we thought Canada was best about when you looked at his resume when you look at the kind of guy he was this is what we thought we were it was the age of Trudeau had just come in we were now a global kind of presence etc we had just won the 72 series there was this whole sense of pride and the whole sense of momentum about Canada and a guy like Ken Dryden sort of representative that he was bright he was in you know he could do whatever you wanted to if you were a media guy you

wanted him on cbc to talk about something political he could do that he could talk hockey and and you know what he had a little bit of grit too one of the stories i tell in the column and i told this story yesterday and the thing i think typifies him is in 1973 he'd won two stanley cups with the habs and he went for his renegotiation and the general manager the montreal canadian sammy pollock said basically like here's uh 25 dollars a gift certificate from harbbs and he was a gift certificate from harbbs and Harvey's and a pat on the back, and that's what you're going to play for this year. In those days, that's what the general managers did, and I don't think so. I don't think of it.

Oh, yeah, you'll play for it. He said, no, I'm going to go get my law degree. And he went for the year, and for people who weren't here at the time, everyone said, oh, he's only gone until Thanksgiving. He's only gone until Christmas. He's only gone until the playoffs. And he stuck the whole thing out. And in the year he was away, the Canadians got eliminated in the semifinals.

They gave up 60 more goals than they had given up the year before. and Ken came back and he basically looked at Sammy Pollock and said, okay, we're doing it my way. But he was, you know, he never lorded it. You never heard him to interview saying, I showed you, et cetera. He just was a great example of a kind of guy, the kind of person you want to be. And it's not something that I think necessarily carries over to today, the values.

Well, here's how I think we tackle the life and legacy of Ken Dryden. Maybe we start with Ken the hockey player. Hell of a player, right, Steve? Well, yes. but I think if that's what you want to do, you miss the biggest part of the story, which is when somebody is that excellent at playing hockey, you just can't imagine that they could be that excellent at anything else, because it takes so much to be that excellent at one thing. And yet, this guy, to this day, I think I'm right about this, to the date he has still got

the highest winning percentage of any goaltender in Stanley Cup playoff history. he's still at the top of the list of goaltenders. And yet somehow, he managed not only to be a fantastic goaltender, but a fantastic author, a fantastic documentarian, a fantastic champion of education. Just a guy, well, look, he was a great president of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Those were in the days when the Leafs actually went deep into the playoffs, although they didn't win the Stanley Cup,

but they went deeper into the playoffs when Ken Dryden was there. And look, this guy was a really good member of Parliament. and a really good cabinet minister. He managed to negotiate child care agreements with every province in Canada and gave us our first national child care program ever. Now, when the Harper government came in, it eliminated the whole thing, and I know he was crushed by that, but the fact is he was the first guy in history to get that done. So, Mike, to me, that's the story, not how many Vezna trophies, how many Calder trophies,

how many Stanley Cups. That's only part of the story. The biggest part of the story is that he was fantastic at that. And it's so many other things at the same time, which is really hard to do. Making your Toronto make debut, James. Tell me about your experience with Ken Dryden. Steve's absolutely right. I mean, talking about him only as a hockey player leaves out, you know, some of the biggest parts of his life.

But you have to because that's how everybody who knows them, that's where it began. Anybody over a certain age in Canada remembers Ken Dryden from Team Canada 72 at the risk of alienating some of my constituents. I grew up a Montreal Canadiens hockey fan, and he was one of my heroes. Even when I saw him as an adult, I couldn't get over that sort of hero worship type feeling whenever I saw the man. But, you know, he lost 57 regular season games, six Stanley Cups in nine years, five Veznas. his hockey record is impeccable he took that year off and article to become a lawyer he's also incredibly principled but as an author and i remember this i remember the i read the game twice and the first time i read it you hang on every word the man had the ability when he wrote but also

when he spoke you know he would say something and my reaction would be yeah that's what i think but i couldn't possibly have put it in such a way that i could understand it like that he just he had he had an ability to sort of capture feelings and emotions that very few other people did uh he was his record was incredible but the child care piece people forget about that that was a monumental accomplishment because he became a minister uh after the 2004 election and within just over a year he had agreements with all ten provinces it was all teed up it was all ready to roll out and then we went into the election as steve mentioned and stephen harper won and it It wasn't until three years ago that child care got, you know, put back on the agenda.

But that's really a Ken Dryden story. And when I tell people involved in politics about it now, most people don't know that part about him. The man was a big thinker. He was, you know, he thought about a big Canada. And I just, I admired the guy so much. And, you know, if you look at, I'm going to go on a bit here. If you look at what he did in the years after he left hockey, he was very passionate about the game and the state of the game and head injuries and concussions.

If you look at the work he did there, it's really remarkably, he spoke about it, he wrote about it. I was in Parliament, it was in 2019, and Gary Bettman and Bill Daly were coming in to testify before the Health Committee about head injuries and sports. I wasn't on the committee at the time, but I sort of inserted myself into the proceedings, and I started asking questions, and my colleagues started seating their time to me, because they realized I knew a lot about the game and I was asking interesting questions. And I got into it with the commissioner

about what they're doing to work towards that. And he talked about the position of player safety and I pointed out to Bettman that every person he'd ever appointed to that job was somebody who never was eligible for the Lady Bang Award. And there was a certain irony there. I suggested to him, look, if you want to find a solution to make hockey better,

you lock Ken Dryden and Don Cherry in a room and don't let them out until they agree on what the rules are going to be. You know, because you've got sort of the balance of power there. But because of that, Ken reached out to me a number of times on the subject, and it was something he cared deeply about. Like, his care for the game was, you know, it was from the heart. How did you end up a Habs fan?

Well, I have a lot in common with Ken Dryden. We were both born. We both grew up in Atobico. We were born elsewhere. In my case, I was born in Thunder Bay. When I was a kid in Thunder Bay, Hockey Night in Canada was always the Montreal Canadiens. My two older brothers were Habs fans. So that's how it started. So I say having a lot in common with them. We were both born elsewhere. We both grew up in Atobico. We both played for Humber Valley. We both became lawyers. I just, I don't have six Stanley Cubs. Oh, that's that, okay. So Ken and I also have a lot in common. We're both born in Hamilton. We both love politics. We both love hockey. And between the two of us,

we've won six Stanley Cups. Exactly. Yeah, and we were both MPs. So it's just, we both fall short there, but Steve. Well, hold my beer. Now, hang on a second. Between him and me. I think we probably have about 20 books. I think that's the closest, no cups and 20 books. But if I could say one thing about it, and this might sound like I'm overdoing it, but I think that the game is the greatest spectator, participant, non-fiction sports book that ever has been written. Here, hear. I agree with you. What James is talking about, and the thing that you're talking about, James, is when you're

reading it, is he has the perspective of the guy who is there, but he also has his eyes up in the stands looking down. And that's so hard as all of us who write, trying to find that voice that sort of transcends it. And he transcended it, and he was funny. If you read that book again today, you'll know stuff about 1980s Montreal. It was a referendum year.

He gets into that, the dynamic, the French-English dynamic on the team. But then he's all so funny about Gila Pointeux, as he calls him, and all of his pranks and things that he played. It's kind of like Jim Bouten's book ball four, but just a little more erudite. And I'm willing to take on anybody in an argument about it who thinks there's a better kind of, as I say, first-person voyeur book in non-fiction sports. Well, you won't get the argument for me. I can assure you that I feel exactly the same way.

And his books that he did with Roy McMurtry. Home game is, there's some brilliant stuff in there about the relationship between players and their fathers, stuff that I drew on when I was writing other books. You know, Roy and he were a really good combination, too. I think Roy brought out great stuff in Ken, and obviously they did some of the stuff on video as well. I love being able to correct Bruce Dobigan.

I don't think it was the former Ontario Attorney General he wrote the book with, I think it was Roy McGregor. Did I say, R. M. M. Mertrie. Oh, yeah, it is, sorry, I got my Scots wrong. What are those Scots? Yeah, no, I wasn't Roy McRerterge. It's Roy McGregor, and they did do a bunch of books, and Roy was, of course, at the Globe. Yeah. No, I should know better.

Yeah, he just wrote a book, which I haven't read yet. It's a book growing up in Tobacco and going to ECI. Oh, it's one of his best, James, one of his best. And I was going to reach up, I didn't look, you know, I'll be honest with you. I shed a tear on Saturday morning when I saw the news. As I said, these guys were my heroes. But I was going to reach out to him because growing up into Tobacco and sharing the interests as we do,

I wanted to come and I was going to organize an event at ECI with him and get him, invite the community to come out and hear it from him firsthand. You know, it's unfortunate. But again, I'm looking forward to reading. I'm sure it's all the same reaction I did when I read his other words. It's called the class. Yeah, you should tell the story. Steve you told us yesterday we were doing something in Aurora yesterday tell the story about this last

year and the suggestion of the documentary that that that sequence you told us that i think it was really eye-opening about who can was if you mean the story where he called me up and he said i think yeah i got it he says i got a story idea for you for the agenda this show i used to host on tv o and i said oh he said can we get together and i'll picture the idea um or no sorry he just said i'm going to call you. That's right. He wasn't well enough to go out and that should have been a heads up to me. But anyway, he said, we spoke on the phone and he said, what are we going to look back at 50 years from now and say to ourselves, how could we possibly have allowed that to happen? He said, Steve, you remember when we were on, you know, when people were allowed to smoke

on airplanes or in elevators or in movie theaters and, and, you know, back at the time, nobody really thought much about it. But 50 years later, we look back and think, how could we possibly have allowed that? He said, I think you should do a show on what are we going to look back at 50 years from now and say, how could we possibly have allowed that? And of course, he was coming at it from an angle, as James suggested, of headshots in hockey. 50 years from now, he would have said, how could you possibly have allowed the amount of headshots in hockey that you're permitting today without absolutely wringing it out of the game? And I went to the brass of TVO and I told them about it. They loved the idea. We ended up doing the

show and it was a like a typical ken dryden iconoclastic interesting intelligent quirky you know kind of a program really quite lovely and we had a few other people on and and again that was the last week of june and he said he had so much back pain that he could not come into the studio to do the show with us and so we had to do it on satellite from his home in midtown Toronto and I should have guessed I mean, that's only three months ago. I should have guessed something was up, but I didn't, and that was the last time we spoke. Steve, it sounds like you had a pretty good relationship of Ken. Maybe elaborate.

How close were you to Ken Dryden? Well, how close was that to Ken Dryden? You know, we spent a lot of time emailing together. He certainly, every time he came out with a book, I wanted to have him on the agenda and talk to him about his book. And we certainly did one on the class, the Etobico Collegiate Institute book that James referred to earlier, which was such a brilliant piece of work. You know, he just basically got in touch with everybody who was in his high school graduation class and just said, what's going on in your life now? And he spent hours with each person and really spun a wonderful yarn about all that. He was very interesting on email.

So, anyway, we got together on the show. we would get together for lunch we would email quite a bit he was a very tough viewer like he wasn't a kind of guy who would suck up he'd send me an email and saying you know like you didn't do well on this question you really needed to be tougher on this question

that kind of thing some of the emails would go on for quite a long time others would be absolutely delightful there was a time I'm at home working and I've got whatever channel on and they're replaying the 1976 Stanley Cup final between the Canadians and the Philadelphia Flyers. So I emailed them right away, and I said,

hey, you're on TV. They're showing this old game. You should watch. He said, absolutely not. I never watch. And I said, why not? He emails me back, and he says, well, we won at that time,

but if I watch it this time, who knows how it might turn out, which I thought was pretty funny. And then I said, no, seriously, you never watch yourself like the old games when they're on? You don't watch? And he said, no.

He said, I remember, I have an image in my head of what I looked like and sounded like and played like back then and I want that to be what stays with me. I don't want to look at it 40 years after the fact and think, oh, that's what it looked like. So anyway, a mixture of humor and brilliance and so iconoclastic, yeah, lovely.

And Bruce, what about your personal interactions with Ken Dryden? Well, we had a lot of interaction because every time I was writing a book and I needed somebody who had an IQ over a fence post in the hockey world. He was the first guy I called. And we ran into each other a little bit from time to time. And, of course, obviously, I had to cover him with the Leafs.

I remember the famous episode where I think Pat Quinn was throttling Howard Burger in an elevator and Kenna just become the president of the Leafs. And it was not a good time for the Leafs. And that was one of the things I had to cover with him. But I told this story yesterday, we're sort of harkening back to this event yesterday. But I told this story yesterday, and I'd known Ken for, I guess, 20 years. And I'd flown in for the 2001 NHL draft in Miami. And I fly in, and it is a monsoon.

Well, anybody who's spent any time in Florida knows when it rains. It rains. So I get in there, and I'm picking up my rental car. And this lonely figure on the other side of the car rental place, it's Ken Dryden. And he says, oh, hi, Bruce. How are you doing? I said, can you give me a ride to the hotel? and my reservation didn't work out.

Sure, absolutely. And it was raining so hard. We couldn't barely see the road. We had to pull over a couple of times as we went along. But the whole time we had a chance to talk. And we started off and he was asking me, first of all, how do I like Calgary? I had just moved there. What's it like?

What are the flames doing, et cetera? We had that kind of thing. And then he segued into, you know, we've been talking about some of his passions. And one, of course, was CTE, the head shots. He hated what had happened. with hockey, Jacques Lemaire and the trap. He thought that goalies were wearing too much, getting away with too much equipment,

and he thought the game was being dumbed down, etc. And in this 45-minute drive to get to the hotel, we're talking about all these things. First of all, I'm afraid we're going to get killed going the wrong way on the street because we couldn't see. This is before ways and all that. And, yeah, we get to the end, and we get out at the hotel and walk in.

And, Ken, he says, here's $40 for the gas. I said, thank you. and the media guys are all in the lobby, as they always are, and this scene is witnessed by a bunch of them, and they're kind of like, whoa, what's going on? First of all, has he just gotten the story on what the Leafs are going to do with the draft, et cetera, et cetera. And Ken goes to them, and he shoes them away.

And then finally Howard Berger, the sainted Howard Burger, comes over to me, and he says, wow, I can't believe that. And I said, well, I just, you know, there's nothing. He said, no, Ken's the most frugal, cheap guy I've ever met. And he just gave him $40. And I thought that was so cute about Ken and, you know, that these kind of Mr. Burns character when it came to tipping in people. Anya, it was a great story about it.

And I think I saw him on the floor of the draft and we sort of said hi. But, you know, it was just one moment where I had 45 minutes with this guy who we're hearing today as a Canadian icon in so many ways. James, can I ask, sorry, Mike, to jump in here, but something just occurred to me. and that was, I wonder if you were on the floor of the House of Commons when the Team Canada Summit Series Club was honored on Parliament Hill and all of the living members of the team came in and all members of Parliament stood and gave him a standing ovation. And from the camera coverage, I wasn't there,

but from the camera coverage, Pierre Paulyev looked across the floor of the House of Commons at Justin Trudeau and their eyes met and they both nodded at each other and smiled as if to say, isn't this cool? and it might have been the only kind of collegial moment between the two of them that I have ever seen in my life. But anyway, were you there that day on the floor? I was there, and I was right behind the prime minister.

I wasn't going to miss that for anything. I guess that's as close as they ever came to be collegial with one another. You're right. I saw the exchange. Anyway, maybe it was, I'm not sure he had the same emotional reaction that maybe the prime minister or i did that's for sure but that was that was a great day because they came onto the floor and it was it's it's maybe the only time or one of the very few times in the 10 years i've been in parliament where we stopped parliament midday to bring people

onto the floor like that and nobody nobody batted at i and i can remember turning around to one of the younger one of my younger colleagues who you know he thinks that sidney crosbie's golden goal was the greatest moment in Canadian history. I said, let me tell you. As fantastic as it was, it wasn't even close. So I was there on the floor and then there was a reception afterwards in the in the speakers, dining room and MPs and people were coming in and out. And of course, I had great conversations with many of them, including Ken Dryden. And I was like a kid again, spending time with them and then towards the end

somebody from the prime minister's office comes in and says okay it's time for everybody to leave it's just players and their families were going down the hall and they were going to meet with the prime minister and the person who was talking from the PMO knows how passionate I am about the game

and it was Paul Henderson who said hold on a second I just adopted Maloney he's coming with us I went into this room and it was just the players and their families and then the prime minister came in and of course the group and the prime minister spoke and he spoke brilliantly but of course the group asked they tapped ken dryden to be the one who spoke on behalf of the team and as soon as he was finished that god i wish i had that recorded because again you're just hanging on every word and he talked about the 72 series and what it meant to the country again in a way that was just you know almost brought you to tears but saying, I want you to think about two numbers, 16 and 21. And I'm scratching my head trying to think, you know, I'm thinking about the scores of games.

I'm trying to do all kinds of different calculations. He says, the population of Canada was 21 million people and 16 million people watched game eight. Amazing. Final game. It is amazing. And it just, you know, the whole room just went, oh, you know, it was just, it was a moment I'll never forget. you know unless you were you know very I can remember I was in grade two and I was living in Thunder Bay at the time and I was mad because my parent my my mom let my older brother stay

home to watch the game but I had to go to school you know some of these traumatizing moments she never got to school and of course the school shut down and they bring these TVs into the classroom so I got to watch it anyway so the whole the whole country was what didn't matter what you were doing or where you were doing unless you were it was an emergency of some sort you were watching that game. But again, he just captured it in a way that nobody else could have. And just briefly, that's what I meant in the column, too, about a man of his time. For people who weren't around in 1972, the impact of the Soviets and the Soviet empire and the dark empire and how we felt about it. And it was a revival of the Canadian spirit

that we'd had in the Second World War and sent in the terms of going after the bad guys and being a small country that stood up for itself. And Ken was part of that. And when the other guys on Team Canada. And, you know, I tell young people it was a great moment. There were some shameful moments from Team Canada in that, with breaking guys' ankles and things like that. But Ken carried himself with dignity. The irony was that the one team that he had trouble with through all the years was probably the Russians. They, they seemed to have more of a sense how to beat Ken Dryden. Ken was perfectly made for Canadian hockey. But the Russians, if you go back and look at game one when the Canadians lost, Ken just couldn't seem to get the knack of what

the Russians were doing. In any event, he had a little bit of trouble with the Russians, but he also in that series, he really was an image for Canada that I thought was really upstanding and go back about it. Actually, Bruce, you know, the funny thing is a lot of people talk about the New Year's Eve game a few years afterwards at the forum as being maybe the greatest hockey game of all time. It was three all, the Montreal Canadiens against the Soviet team. Was it the Central Red Army? I can't remember now. And the shots on goal that night were something like 36 to 13 for the Montreal Canadians, which meant that Vladislav Trechiak had a pretty amazing night, and Ken Dryden didn't. And I remember talking to him about that game, which everybody

praises as one of the greatest games of all time. And he always said, not for me. I hated that game. That was a New Year's Eve game, and he never wanted to remember it because he was the second best goalie on the ice that night for sure. And guys, that was the knock on him. And it's one of the reasons that I think Sammy Pollock maybe underrated him in those negotiations. Everybody at the time, I was a young guy. We tried to act like smart asses. And, oh, well, he's carried by the team. Anybody could be the goaltender for the Montreal Canadiens and blah, blah, blah.

And he showed in the year that he was away. And there was a good clip today from the senator, you know who the senator, Sarah Savard, of course. He was talking about Ken Dryden. And he said, look, the guy only faced 12, 15 shots a night. And he had to stay alert and ready for all of those. And a lot of the time, they came on really good chances for the other team like a breakaway. And he said it was a very hard thing for him to do.

And so he had a lot of respect for him. Sometimes it's easier. Goleys will tell you to get 35 to 40 shots. You're in the game the whole time. For sure. When you get 15, your pads are cold, your legs and arms are cold. And Ken had to do that many nights. And he wasn't getting 15 shots on goal when he was a rookie, playing against a Boston Bruins,

beating Phil Esposito and Wayne Cashman and Bobby Orr. And, I mean, that was, he was busy in that series. series and he stole the Hawks too. And the saves in the Chicago Black Hawk series, the final, where it may be even better. You remember Phil S. Bizzito called him an effing giraffe. He said, that effing giraffe, because they didn't know anything about him, right? He'd come out of nowhere.

A fun fact is he's the only goaltender to win a Stanley Cup before he won the Calder Trophy. Yeah. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that amazing? He came up, I remember talking to him about that once. I said, how was it? Because Rogi Vashon, the first ringgoly of the Canadians got injured.

And Phil Muir was the back. backup. And Scotty Bowman, I guess, made the decision that they weren't going to go with MIR. They were going to bring this kid up from the Nova Scotia Voyagers, and they were going to bring him up at the very end of the year and let him play goal. And son of a gun, he played what, six NHL games and then went through the playoffs, won the Stanley Cup. And then the next year, he wins the Calder Trophy as the best rookie in the NHL. That's, I mean, you just can't do that. And he did it. And a little, sorry, go ahead, James. No, I was going to say, I have the same reaction.

People who don't like the HABs always say, oh, you know, he had the big three. He had this phenomenal team. But the guy, he was an incredible goalie, and you're right, when you're not getting a lot of action, you have to stay on your game. And look, his record speaks for itself. He, in two seasons in a row, he lost 12 games and eight games. I mean, think about that. Even if the same as phenomenal as it is, he's got to be phenomenal, too. They don't do that without him.

And one of the great ironies, too, you're talking about the Boston teams at the time. And you guys probably know this. Maybe you don't. But when I was doing my book about the greatest trades in the NHL history, and we made a list of the top 25 of all time, people don't know this. 1964, Ken Dryden was the property of the Boston Bruins. And he was traded for three guys who I think went on to, like, sell insurance or be car jockeys or whatever it was on both sides of the four guys. but then he's six this is 64 and he doesn't make his appearance at the big level until

1970 71 in that era and he disappeared he went well we know where he played he played at cornell and all that sort of stuff but he nobody knew who he was but boston had him and they let him go on behalf i got a i got a story about that too mike if i can and that is i remember asking him one time you know because the draft back then was not like the draft today right they didn't have in an anna in a huge arena and it was on live on television no it was It happened privately, and Ken was informed after the fact that he'd been drafted by the Boston Bruins and then traded in what is clearly one of the worst trades in NHL history. And I remember him telling me that when he was a member of parliament, he was on the road.

I think it was in Timmons. And he was campaigning up in Timmons. And when he was at the Timmons Airport, he accidentally bumped into one of the guys that he was traded for in that trade. And they had a lovely conversation. and he said it was so nice to finally meet this guy because they didn't know him at all and their paths crossed there. I'm just on, I'm on the Google machine right now

trying to find out which guy it was because if you tell me the name I'll remember, but I don't remember right now. But he said they had like just such a lovely brief conversation in the airport and then went their separate ways and never saw each other again. But can you imagine

can you imagine the serendipity of that and that poor guy who got traded for Ken Dryden and Bruce your right, had no career at all in the NHL, and Ken only became a legend. It was two guys. There were two guys. Yeah, it was two guys. Coming the other way.

But you know what? I bet they never bought a beer in a bar. That was always their thing. I'm a guy who was traded. Oh, yeah. Oh, here it is. Here it is. Boston traded Dryden, along with a guy named Alex Campbell to the Montreal Canadiens four.

And bless me, if either, you know, if anybody on this call knows these guys' names, Paul Reed and Guy Allen. We looked them up when we were doing the book. Household names, household names. No, they're not. I'm sorry. One selling insurance, the other selling cars. And just as, now I'm going to go full hockey walk here.

And please, I apologize for this. The NHL didn't have a universal draft, in fact, until 1970. In the time when Ken was drafted in the 60s, the only guys who were drafted were people who hadn't been signed to what they called a C-form. In those days, you went and you signed Frank Mahavlitz, you signed all of these guys in their minor league teams and had them. So there wasn't a big amount of guys. I think the most famous guy was maybe Gary Monaghan or somebody like that.

Everybody else was a nobody. So, as Steve says, nobody paid any attention to the draft. It wasn't on TV. There's no reason to put it on TV. And as I say, he just kind of disappeared for a few years. And off he went and played hockey in college. And, of course, he was the voice on the broadcast of the Miracle on Ice sitting next to Al Michaels. He was the analyst.

He was also on radio as the analyst for the 76 series, which I still think, the 76 Canadian team was the best team of all, or maybe 76 or maybe, I don't know, a lot of Hall of Famers on that team. That maybe that was the best one. But anyhow, he did all this broadcasting stuff as well. Do you know, Mike, sometimes his emails to me were very, very long, and other times they were very, very short.

And apropos of the story Bruce just told, I remember being at some event, and I'm at a table with Glenn Anderson, who was, of course, part of those Euler dynasties, and he played for the Leafs for a little while. And Glenn Anderson and I got into an argument about who the color commentator was with Al Michaels for the U.S. 1980 Olympic hockey gold medal. And I said, well, it was Ken Dryden. I know it was Ken Dryden.

He said, no, I don't think you're right. I think it was somebody else. So I emailed Ken and I said, you know, am I misremembering? I sure thought it was you. I got back a two-word email. Glenn's wrong. That was it. No other words required.

Now, I'm a man, sadly, I never got to see Ken Dryden play hockey. Can you believe that? I miss the man's entire career. Just born at the wrong time. Well, you're too young. Too young. So just before we, because, you know, we talked about how you can't talk about Ken Dryden and just talk about his performance on the ice because he was so much more.

But just to put a bow on sort of the hockey career of Ken Dryden. So, of course, we know he backstops Canada to the win in the 1977. Summit series. I have a documentary on VHS. I recorded, I think it was on global. It was called Summit on Ice. And there's a quote from Ken in there where he says something like, I realized I could wake up tomorrow the most hated man in Canada. Like some great quote like that. And I'm like, I can't believe this happened. Like it's like just, is this scripted. This is amazing. So Summit series, of course, we won Henderson's scores for Canada. But is it, am I right? He played only eight seasons in the

NHL? Retired of 30, I think, didn't he? He retired in, nine seasons, yeah. Nine, okay, so six cups in nine seasons. And can you, how many years in, when he took that year off, you guys were talking about him

article, like, the whole idea for a youngster trying to understand. So he wins how many cups, and then he takes a year off, he comes back. He won two before. Okay. And then he won four after he came back. It's like Michael George. in here. Four in a row.

It's incredible, four in a row. Four in a row after he came back, and then he retires again, and the Canadians don't win another cup until 86 when the Oilers decided they all were going to go partying for a year. They said, somebody else won the cup that year. But, you know, he left, and it wasn't until Patrick Graw came along, that the Canadians had a really good goalie again. That's incredible.

Go ahead, Steve. Yeah, I just wonder if I could ask James a question here. I'm really curious about this, because, of course, I'm interested. in the political angle on him, which is part of what makes him such an interesting story. He ran for the leadership of your party, the Liberal Party of Canada in 2006. This is the convention that Stefan Dian won over Michael Ignatyev, who I think was a Tobico Lakeshaw MP before you. And Bob Ray was there, and Gerard Kennedy, and I think Martha Hull-Finley and Ken,

and maybe Carolyn Bennett was in there too. Anyway, I'm very curious, given that he was a hero of yours, and I don't want to call you out here if you didn't. But who did you support for a leader at that convention? I supported Michael Ignatius. And I'll be honest with you, had Michael not been my MP, I would have been supporting Kent Trident. That was a tough one for me, Steve, without a doubt. I can bet. And I not, and I, and I would have a little bit, just made, so the record's clear, I wouldn't have supported him just because I idolized the guy as a hockey player. The guy was a remarkable individual and a passionate Canadian, but a great politician.

I didn't serve at the same time as he did, but I remember he came and did a spoke in an event for Gene Augustine, who was the MP in Tobacco Lakeshire for a long time, and it was not long after he was elected. And, you know, I introduced him, and he got up and spoke about sort of, and it was early on in his political career. And, you know, the message he was delivering was,

you know, he was talking about civility and the lack of civility and how he was sort of taken aback by the behavior of people in the House of Commons. And it was a very passionate, powerful message. But, you know, it sort of made him more determined to continue doing what he was doing because, you know, he wanted to make change and that was part of the change. I mean, I never saw the guy speak in a way that was not overly animated but not angry or upset. set. The guy was always very calm, very civilized, very passionate, and very inspiring. You know, the flip side of that, though, James, is that he was not a particularly dynamic speaker. He couldn't rouse a crowd in the way that, you know, a Bob Ray could or even Michael Ignatyev could. And I wonder if that held him back in his quest to be leader.

Well, I think the level of his... It absolutely did. That leadership, his speech at that convention in Montreal was brilliant if you read it. But, you know, he just didn't, he didn't have the animation. He didn't have the flare, you know, and that's not a knock against a man. It's just the way he was. But if you listen to him, you know, you think about what he's saying, it was brilliant. But he didn't have the, he couldn't get the crowd standing up like he did when he was a goal. A slower cadence, if you will, like, where.

So he's very thought, you could tell. He's very thoughtful and considerate. But that doesn't always make for a rousing orator as a, like, Barack Obama or somebody. Yeah, he was, he was like Harold Pinter used to say the drama is in the pauses, and the pauses were oftentimes the best parts of Ken's speech. No, because that allowed you the chance to take on, often was an abstract or a conflicting thought. You had to think about it, and he at least gave you that.

But when I was at CBC, you know, he had a reputation that everyone wanted them on shows, but Ken didn't want to do a three-minute hit. He needed to have a little oxygen so he could do these. things and so there was this whole juggling act about how much time have we got can we get can't can on there and can we get them in the package we want now if i was if tv o for instance where a certain host had 20 30 minutes on a night to bloviate about okay i got a story about that okay i got a story about that because you know one of the one of the things that you really you talk about the pauses and one of the things when you're an interviewer that you really prize is somebody who actually

takes a pause and thinks about what their answer is going to be. And I remember when we did the interview about his book, The Class, about his time at a Tobago Collegian Institute. And I said to him, I said, now, Ken, this is me talking. This is not you, because I know you're too modest to say this. But inevitably, when you look at your colleagues that you went to school with, it's inevitable that everybody at some point compares and contrasts how well everybody did. And Ken, I mean, let's be honest.

you know if there's a contest you win there's nobody else in your high school graduating class that comes close to your level of accomplishment in so many areas how do you deal with that when you have a class reunion or whatever and i got one of those pauses like he just he almost didn't know how to answer that because basically what i was saying to him was you're just great and you're greater than anybody else in your class was and i'm telling you right now you have to acknowledge that. And it was something he didn't want to acknowledge. You know, he's a very modest guy.

He was shy and introverted in that way. And I loved the pause. I loved the pause because it just showed, you know, as smart as he is, he just didn't, he had to think about his answer. He wasn't quite sure where to go. Now, Steve and Bruce, we have about five minutes more with James.

And then I'm making you two stick around to continue talking about the great Ken Dryden. So, James, it's worth noting for the listenership that you and I both went at different times, but you and I both went to Michael Power High School in Atobico. And not too far from a Tobico Collegiate Institute. I mean, we're in the Catholic system, but I would say the closest public high school would be a Tobico Collegiate Institute. Oh, yeah, back in those days, I mean, Michael Power has moved since then,

but I used to have to, I walked to school a lot of times when I was at Michael Power, and I would cut through the park behind Central Arena where Ken Dryden played in his youth and I used to walk by the ECI students and of course we had to wear a uniform at Michael Power and those guys used to make fun of us so I know exactly where ECI is I don't live far from there now

but my nephew goes there now so hello to my nephew Nate there you go yeah guys I do have to jump off I have to run off as I said I apologize but first of all listen thanks for letting me be part of this with the three of you It's very special, but we're talking about a guy who was, you could talk about him for hours. I mean, the man was truly remarkable as a hockey player, as an author, isn't a Canadian. And it's just, it's a loss to the country because anybody who's old enough to remember him,

whether it didn't matter who you cheered for, you knew who Ken Dryden was for all of the different things he did. And as I said, I shed a bit of a tear on Saturday morning because, you know, when these childhood memories, you have when something like this happens it's a powerful moment i had the same reaction when gila fleur passed away i got up i poured myself a cup of coffee and i saw the news first thing i did was i sent ken dry in an email and i said you know growing up you know that you and larry robinson of gila fur you guys were the guys i watched and you know canadians lost a hero today but you lost a friend and i just wanted to say i'm sorry and he wrote back right away and just said thanks james i really appreciate that and that's the kind of guy was i mean he was he was a special human

being and i talked to some of my colleagues here uh i'm with my caucus colleagues a few of them serve with them and they said he would he would go out of his way to come and visit you in small towns and speak at events and help them out uh you know and talk about his dream for canada uh in the future of the country and he was that's the kind of guy he was and we were we were lucky we were all lucky to share a piece of our lives with the man so thanks guys thank you thank you james thank you Great to see you. Thanks for doing this, James. I appreciate it.

My pleasure. I like the Great Lakes Beer there in the background. When you come over to make your proper Toronto Mike debut, I have some fresh craft beer for you from Great Lakes Beer. And a lasagna, too. And a lasagna as well. Save some of that, would you, Bruce? Okay.

See you, James. Thanks, James. Take care. Take care. So, Steve, before we get back to Ken, can I tell you and Bruce how we got to have James Maloney on the podcast? I'm all ears. Yeah, this weekend, there's an event.

Bruce, did you make your way to the taste of the Kingsway while you're in town visiting family? I was right next to it. I was right just at the base of the hill and I could hear all the music, but no, I didn't engage. Didn't engage. Okay, well, I went there on Saturday and Sunday. Okay, I took my 11-year-old. I figured I can never take my 11-year-old Jarvis to see my favorite band of all time because sadly the tragically hip is no more and he was far too young for me to get him to the show I went to.

2016, but the practically hip were playing. So yesterday, I said, hey, James Jarvis, we're going to go to, I think it was at like five o'clock till 630, and we biked over, and we treated it like it was the tragically hip, and he had a great time. So I spent a lot of time this weekend at Taste of the Kingsway, and James Maloney had a booth, and at this time, I was getting emails with Bruce, you, and Steve, and we were putting this together, this Ken Dryden episode, it was coming together very quickly, of course. And then I was chatting with James and I just said, I can't remember how he came up.

I can't remember. I mentioned Tobico Collegiate Institute, I think, which is in his writing. And then I mentioned Ken Dryden and he started talking about growing up a Habs fan and everything. And I said, well, I'm trying to put together this tribute to Ken, like the life and legacy of Ken Dryden. I got Steve Paken and Bruce Dobigan. And then James says, I was just with Steve. So Steve, were you just with James Maloney at something? Like a dinner maybe? I was on Friday. Yeah, last Friday. There's a guy named Justin Van Dette from East York who organized a lunch in East York for, I think as many as 50 former Toronto City Councilors. And James Maloney, before he was a member of parliament, was a very short-term Toronto City counselor.

I think he'd actually only been on council for a few months because he joked to me. He said he gave his maiden speech at Toronto City Council. And then almost immediately he gave his exit speech from Toronto City Council because he was, was only there for a very short time before he moved up to parliament. So yeah, that's where I saw just last Friday. Too funny. And then I just said, hey, would you like, because at the time, we were all going to meet on Zoom. I didn't know Bruce could make his way to the TMDS studio here. And then he's like, I would love to be a part of that. And we just cooked it together. And I thought it would be kind of neat to get our MP here. That's what you do, Mike. You bring people together.

We love you for it. Even if you are dyeing your hair silver, we love it anyway. Oh, you know what, Steve Paykin? I know you want the number of the, you. the dye I'm using, so I'll just text you that number so you can... I know you dye your hair gray to give you that added gravitas, I understand, but that's okay, it's a good look for you. In the words of a famous Montreal Canadian, I put a little gray on this side, so my wife likes it, but that wasn't Ken Dratton. That wasn't the Ken Dryden. I think it was Rockett. Two minutes for looking so good, Rocket.

That was it. And his hair, when you saw him in those days, the stuff he was putting his hair made it look green. Well, it oxidized your hair. The early stuff where they were doing that and guys used it made your hair look green. Okay, so if we're keeping track at home here, because there's still some more stories from YouTube before I dismiss you, okay?

All right, so we have an NHL Hall of Famer, obviously, who wins six Stanley Cup. That's hard to believe. Mark Messier won six Stanley Cups, five with the Oilers, and then one with the New York Rangers, over like a couple of decades, which was unbelievable.

But for a goaltender to win six, I think that's unbelievable to think about that, that he won six in the cup. So, six and eight years. I know. Amazing. I think Jacques Plant won six with the Canadians. But we're in the original six era, right?

Yeah, it's six team league. I feel like that's in count. So we have the NHL great, who also, of course, the 1972 Summit series. And although I wasn't there for that, I completely appreciate what it meant in the Cold War. And I understand what it means. I'm addicted to those documentaries,

books and everything about the 72-7 series. So we have all that. And taking that year off is unbelievable to me that in his prime he takes this year off. But the fact he retired, it's sort of like Barry Sanders, right? I always thought he was going to come back, Barry Sanders.

Like, oh, he'll come back. Never came back. Okay, he was gone. But to retire in his early 30s like that. And then to basically become a lawyer. Okay, let's not, you know, become a lawyer. I got a story on that, Mike. Please, go ahead.

Yeah, as I walk through, I want you to chime in of any story. You too, Bruce. Go ahead, Steve. Ken told me, this story because I wrote a book about former Prime Minister John Turner a few years ago and to that end, Ken told me

a story about when he got together with Mr. Turner asked him for career advice and I guess Mr. Turner put him in touch with a particular law firm or a lawyer that he knew. So Ken went for a job interview actually and the guy whom he sees at this appointment

is sitting sort of behind his desk with his feet up and is looking at Ken's resume and he's seeing, you know, McGill University and this and that. And then he sort of looks over the resume at Ken sitting there nervously and he says, so I gather you've played some hockey in your time. That was it. That was it. Anyway, you know, for people, for famous people, famous sports people, when you meet somebody who doesn't know who you are whatsoever, I had a neighbor in Calgary and Grant Fuhr lived in our neighborhood, which is how I came to write his book,

but anyhow, we had these friends from Texas and they lived across the street and the woman would come over to us and say, we have such lovely neighbors up here. We love. We love the winner in Calgary and the lovely people. I think he might have been some kind of athlete. I'm not sure. We're going like, this is Grant Fuhr, who was the goalie, maybe the best hockey team that ever was.

Wow. Well, John Turner put Ken Dryden in touch with a guy named Arden Haynes at the time. And Arden Haynes was running Imperial Oil. And, you know, it was just sort of go out with this guy and pick his brains and see what is out there for you in the legal slash business world, that kind of thing. and and it was a meeting that didn't have any payoff immediately,

but down the road, when Ken wanted to do a series on, I think it was on CBC television about hockey, he called up Arden Haynes, whom he'd met a decade earlier, thanks to John Turner, and apparently Imperial Oil slash ESO came in and was the presenting sponsor of this whole thing because of the meeting that they had before. The two men knew each other,

and those kinds of, you know, those kinds of connections served Ken well. And, you know, it's just, to me, it's just so fascinating that this guy who could be so good on the ice could be so good at so many other things. I just don't know how one person achieves that. You know, Mike, imagine if you would, one day he goes to Premier Bill Davis, who is Ontario Premier from 1971 to 85, and he goes to Mr. Davis after his hockey career is over, and he says, I'm really interested in education. And I'd like to kind of study it and write a report for your government on some changes that you could make. Like, can you imagine any other player in the history of the National Hockey League, A, making that offer, or B, being accepted by the premier of the day? And Mr. Davis said, yeah, go ahead and do it.

And Ken spent the next year sitting in the back of classrooms all over the province of Ontario just watching how kids got educated. And he took it all in. he wrote a report, he presented it to the government. I mean, it's just to me, it's another example of just how iconoclastic he was. And he's not just another player, because you might find about, oh, this guy played a little bit here and there,

became a lawyer and had some success in other parts of his life. But the fact that this is a hockey hall of famer who backstopped Canada to the victory in the 72 series and won six Stanley Cups in eight years, like not just another player. Yeah. The closest guy to that, And it would happen before, of course, was Red Kelly.

Red Kelly was playing for the Leafs and he was a member of parliament at the same time. He would go up to Ottawa on the train on Monday, and spent a couple of days in Ottawa as an MP. And he won, I think, three or four cups with Detroit and then three with the Leafs. He won four with Detroit and four with the Leafs. There you go. So eight. But he never really did anything with it afterwards.

That's what makes Steve's story so remarkable is that Red, you know, he had business connections and things he did afterwards. and, of course, he coached the Leafs, but he stayed in the hockey realm. And, you know, as the only Montrealer, as the only Quebecer on this little chat thing we've had tonight, the impact of him in some respects, and he writes about it in the book, was Montreal Canadians were the institution that felt it had to be a symbol for the province of the two solitudes staying together, the English and the French. And the Canadians were always conscious of, if you had a French-Canadian star,

you also matched it with an English-Canadian star. and Ken writes about it in the book. And a lot of his ideas about Canada, the unity of Canada, what he wanted to bring, came out of that experience in Montreal. It was a referendum year. You know, there was a lot of tension. There was a lot of anger in the dressing room

between some of the players. And he wanted to be that guy who was going to bring unity to the rest of the country. And I said this to you a little bit yesterday. Steve, we were talking about another person, what we were talking about Bill Davis. And I said, as a person who lives in the West now, people, there are people who would love to reach out to somebody in Ontario in the East who was like

Mr. Davis, who was like Ken Dryden, but those people aren't there anymore. They don't see people that they used to see when they would go to the constitutional meetings. It's so hard to get a coalition going when it's people who are fighting. It's a blood sport that they're fighting. And so Ken understood all of those things, and he had really a holy mission, and I'm sorry that he died before he could see the fruition of it, or, or some level of success for it, but it was important to him. It's interesting you bring that up,

Dobie, because I do remember having a conversation with him about one really significant regret he had during his years playing for the Montreal Canadiens. And that was he never became fluently bilingual. Yeah. And it really bothered him. And of course,

when he got into politics, and it came time for him to run for the leadership of the Liberal Party, you know, being fluently bilingual is a, I mean, he was okay. but he, you know, he didn't have Justin Trudeau's ability in French and English, right? And I sort of looked at him. I remember looking at him and saying, how's it possible?

You could have been in that dressing room with guys like Guillafleur and Guillaupin, Serge Savaar, and Yvonne, and Yvonne Convoyet, and you're not perfect in French. How did that, how did that not happen? And he didn't really have a good response to it, but it certainly bothered him that his French never got perfect. Well, because the language of the dressing room, as he said, was Frangley. It was both English and French. It was this kind of stoop out of words. A vote get don't hockey stick, a patine to the box, and all that.

That was the kind of franglet that operated. But there were resentment, certain of the Sovereignty members on the team, guys like Mario Trombly, were resentful of the Canadian English guys not speaking. And now we've seen that numerous times. It was Saku Kovu was put through the ring around that in later years. But there was quiet resentment that the Anglo players hadn't necessarily learned to speak. And Scotty was a Montrealer, and he had some French, so he could sort of get conversed

a little bit. But it was the beginning of the, you know, that mistrust between the communities, not just in the hockey team, but, of course, in the province at large. Okay, so we have the Hall of Famer in 72 Summit series, becomes, retires young, becomes a lawyer, great author. I mean, we talked about, like, the game, and we talked about this book he wrote. Was it called Classmates? what's it called?

The class. The class about his E.C.I. Classmates, which is his most... By the way, that's when I took... I happen to know a gentleman works for the PR of the publishing house that published the class. And I wrote... I did my very, very best. I said, look, I'm in a Tobaccoe. I want to talk about this E.C.I.

I said, I'm no Steve Paken, but, you know, I didn't quite... I wasn't able to put it together. You're no Steve Pagan or you know Steve Pekin. Both are true. Both are true, right, Steve? Okay, but I want to talk about a period. We only brushed on it briefly, Steve, you brought it up earlier. But this man became president of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

And I think you talked about, I think there were, as I recall, as a die-heard-leaf fan, sadly, two conference finals during this period. And I know, wouldn't we go for that these days? Oh, yeah. Well, there's been four in my, well, only four that I watched. I don't know in my lifetime. There was only four. There might have been one in the 70s.

I missed, but, or two. But I got a There was a semi-final team in 76, I believe it was. That's the Sittler-McDonnell. McDonald one, I think it was 76. Yeah, and that's the one I missed. It was the year after they beat the Islanders, I think.

It was 78? 78? 78? Well, 78, they beat the Islanders. I think it was 79. They lost four straight to the Habs, but two games went in overtime. Right, okay, so that's the one I missed. But these two of Pat Quinn, you mentioned, Bruce, Howard Berger and Pat Quinn,

I kind of need to do a full 90 minutes on Berger versus Quinn, okay? But I was reading, Berger's got a blog I read, and he was writing about how Ken Dryden handled the Maple Leaf Garden sex scandal, the pedophile sex scandal. And it sounds like he might have been the ideal person to be at the helm.

He was brought in for part, part of the reason that they hired Ken Dr. Ken was because they needed somebody who was Simon Pure. That they, you know, they had sort of sloughed it off. They weren't paying enough attention to it. It became a terrible. scandal and even then politically they didn't know how to handle it and Ken was the guy to come

along Steve you know you can speak to this too he was he was less doing the hockey stuff than he was doing the image of the Leafs in the community and and he was successful at that he got them through it obviously there was some terrible things that had happened and the whole scandals with the young boys at Maple Leaf Gardens etc and he got them through it and and that was a real accomplishment for him and he didn't get much credit for it because of course everybody would blame you for whether the team wins or loses. And frankly, he wasn't down at the rink doing all that stuff that much. He was busy on the other parts of growing the Leafs.

The Leafs, as we know it today, the MLSC stuff had its foundation in those years between him and obviously the people who owned the team. I think that's all very fair to say. And some of you may remember, some people listening or watching to this, may remember Steve Stavros own the Leaves at the time, the Leafs at the time, and gave a very poorly received press conference. where he was behind the microphones and just did not answer questions and did not present, just did not, had no answers and did not seem to grasp the significance of what was going on.

And, yeah, only Ken Dryden, I think, had the gravitas to be able to give people the sense that justice was going to be had and that things were going to be cleaned up and he could do it. And so, yeah, I agree, Bruce. he was brought in in large measure to handle that. And no, he wasn't an exos and O's guys, and he wasn't overseeing trades and that kind of stuff. He could have been. He could have been that.

But it wasn't what he was there for. And he had the discipline to not necessarily interfere in those things. And yeah, and there was one time, Stephen, almost ironically, where his sort of measured, slightly boring, slightly pedantic style of speaking, et cetera, was exactly what was needed. There were too many hotheads, too many people, too passionate John Brophy people surrounding the organization.

They needed somebody like Ken who was going to be the principal and get everybody settled down. I do remember one year when the Leafs were eliminated in the semifinals, we brought them onto a show I used to host called Studio 2 at TVO

and we talked about how the team did all year and yada, yada, yada. And then I think the last question I asked him was, okay, Ken, so now that the Leafs are out, who do you hope wins the Stanley Cup? And without missing a beat, he just looked at me and he said, I don't care.

I thought, yeah, that is exactly the right answer. We don't care. Now that our team's out, it doesn't matter. Yeah, I would have been very surprised if he said anybody else. Because at his heart, he was still a hockey guy, too. He was a competitive guy, and it mattered winning and losing. He'd think a guy who was that bright could intellectualize everything and sort of gloss over the top, and he wouldn't have got his feet on the ground.

No, in his heart, he was a 12-year-old boy, still playing hockey. But you know what? I do remember, again, in another interview, I remember talking about the Summit series with him. And we all hear around our three microphones, remember when Phil Esposito said of the 72 Summit series, I hated the Soviets so much I could have killed them. I would kill to win that series.

And, you know, I never got the sense that Ken Dryden felt the same way about that. I thought he was too intellectual and too thoughtful to feel the same way. But then I had some conversations with Ken in which he kind of led on that you know what all this business about no we were there to win and we were there to do whatever the hell it took to win and i remember asking about the bobby clark slashing valerie harlemov on the ankle and you know he i might have expected a guy with ken's pedigree to say yes that was very inappropriate and he shouldn't have done that but he didn't say that and it just it went to show to me it showed that that even a guy with his

intellect and poise and grace desperately wanted to win that series and was prepared to do whatever it took to save Canada's hockey honor. And they did. And just as a footnote for people, again, young fellows in this in this studio, it wasn't the first time Ken had played for Canada. Back in the late 60s, Canada had tried to field an all amateur team. Carl Brewer, in fact, was supposed to be playing for that team. And a lot of guys who went into the NHL later were part of that team and his father David Bowers dream and Ken was involved in that program as well and he played of course they had no chance against the Soviets in those days because they were you know maybe a hundred or two hundredth on the depth chart for Canadian hockey players but he was involved at

that point and I think it was it rankled him the only time I talked to him that it rankled him because they didn't feel like they had a chance they was it was a noble mission but they didn't really have a chance and to finally be there in 72 with the team that could beat them I think was it was good for him too because he you know he'd missed his chance earlier you know one thing we have not talked about here and that is his time in american collegiate hockey he went to cornell in ithaca new york and i'm reminded of this because i got a call from somebody who works at cornell they're trying to put together a tribute uh a tribute night for ken dryden in the upcoming hockey season there didn't they retire his sweater oh yeah for sure they definitely

retired. He wore number one there, strangely enough, not 29. He wore number one there, and they definitely have his sweater retired in the rafters. But I mean, they won an NCAA championship one year. They're the best hockey team in American collegiate hockey one year. And I think

his overall record, if you can imagine this, in however many years he spent at Cornell, I forget if it's three or four at this point, he had a record of something like 80 wins and five losses in all of his time. In all of his time, goaltending at Cornell for the big red. I mean, just, you know, the people who want to say

that he was just sort of a bystander and he was along for the ride because he was on good teams, yes, he was on good teams, but he was a huge reason why they were good teams. So like, cut that out, give the man his due. He was playing Boston University all the time, wasn't he? Hey, stop it now. That's my album. I'm just kidding. I'm just teasing him about it. And who, of course, now here's your snap quiz, who is another very, very. famous hockey alumnus from Cornell. Another famous hockey alumnus from Cornell who played the NHL?

Who's an NHL figure who was an alumnus of Cornell. I do not know. Can you give us a clue? Sure, I'll give you a clue. He's the commissioner of the NHL. Bedman went to Cornell? I did not know that. Big red, big red.

Who did he play for again? Remind me? He played, he was probably played for the manager of the team or something a lot of those lines. He wanted to be the basketball commissioner and he worked for the basketball people for a while and then they sloughed him off on the NHL. Well, we were so lucky

and has hockey fans to get Gary Bettman. That's another show, Mike. Well, as we wind down here, I was wondering, it's a great question for you, Steve. So you've talked about how competitive he was on the ice, even if you'd think maybe he'd be a cooler customer.

But as a politician, so he, you know, know, after being president of the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team, he becomes, he runs for office and he wins. He becomes a member of parliament. This is, he becomes a cabinet minister. But I guess does he lose in the Harper wave that comes? Yeah. Yes, that's exactly right. By the time, I mean, it Ken told me, I remember asking him, you know, you were rumored to be running in politics for a very long time. Why did you wait till, I think it was 2004 for running for the first time? And he said, I really wanted to have, you know, something to offer people.

And he said, you know, when I was 30 and just finished my career in hockey, I really didn't feel like I had anything other than, you know, fame. I didn't feel I had anything to offer people. And so I wanted to have a bit of a career. I wanted to be able to show that I had some accomplishments beyond that. Thus, not just hockey, but education and writing and documentary filmmaking and some business experience and so on and so forth. And he said, it really took.

until 2004 for me to feel like I was ready to run. Now, unfortunately, for him, his timing wasn't great because the liberal, you know, the liberal years, which started in 1993 with Jean-Cretchen and then flipped over to Paul Martin in 2004, I guess, you know, they were on the denouement right now. So, I mean, you're coming in, your timing wasn't great. So he came in, he got in a government for two years, put together that national child care program and then in 2006 I lost when Stephen Harper's

side came in and formed a minority government in 2006 and he lost his seat in New York Center which was thought to be one of the safest liberal seats in the whole country and I guess we learned in that election that it was not. It's a little bit like obviously you write about it in your book

about John Turner that Turner was problem he was a victim of bad time he had an early chance and then when his chance came around it had basically passed his day his his moment had passed. And for Ken Dryden, when he felt he was ready, it was too late. People in the West weren't reaching out for a Ken Dryden liberal anymore.

They were looking for other kind of people. And Quebec, I should say, not just the West. Right, in Quebec. I'm so glad we did this. Ken Dryden, again, sadly, I never got to see the man play, just born at the wrong time. But what a rich life and legacy and sort of exceptionally great and multiple unrelated disciplines. Like, he shouldn't be that good an author, you know, that good, a leader, lawyer, and hockey player. Like, that's just too much, right?

That's just too much. So I'm wondering if either of you on our way out here have any final thoughts about Ken Dryden, who we lost at the, what I think is a far too young age of 78. I'm just going to throw that out here. 78, when I was young, seemed like an old guy. It doesn't seem as old from where I sit today. Well, those of us in our 70s consider it to be too very young. Absolutely.

He was a very young 78, I got to tell you. I mean, he just did not look 78. Mike, I'll tell you what, I mean, even though Ken and I had a lot of contact over the years, you know, it's natural for me to have asked myself at some point. I think we're friends, but, I mean, are we really friends? We see each other. We spend time together. We email each other a lot.

But the guy knows thousands and thousands of people, so I don't presume to think I'm his friend. And yet, as we sit here taping this on a Monday night, tomorrow, there will be a private family funeral. And I'm, like, beyond honored to say, I got invited to go to this. And I'm shocked, but I guess it helps answer the question about whether or not Ken Dryden had the kind of, Ken Dryden and I had the kind of relationship I thought we have. I guess we did. And I'm, as much as I'm not looking forward to going to the funeral tomorrow, I really am looking forward to going and paying my respects to a guy who I just had immense respect, admiration, and affection for.

Hearing you tell that story, Steve, we're going to close with Bruce. I've decided Bruce is our closer. You are the Tom Hanky of this episode, okay? I'm the Dwayne Ward. Well, I hope I'm not a Jeff Hoffman in that case, then. No, you're not a Jeff Hoffman. That's out of here. But, you know, you can make the argument, Ward better than Hanky, so we're in good shape here.

I got a couple of good ones here. Hearing you, Steve, talk about, were we really friends or was an acquaintance? He knows thousands of people. Like, just even hearing you talk that out, I'm reminded of a phone call I had with Dave Hodge when Gordon Lightfoot passed away. So, Gordon Lightfoot dies, and I get on the phone, and a recorded call with Dave Hodge. And Hodge had the similar thoughts, like, I think we were friends. but there's a million people who have touched greatness of Gordon Lightfoot

and he's inspired so many were we really friends and you could kind of hear him kind of talking it out and then coming to the conclusion that, like, yes, I am proud to consider Gordon Lightfoot a friend in addition to being a genius in the musical realm. But so Steve, you know, you don't want to ever go to Ken Dryden's funeral but I'm glad you'll be there tomorrow to pay, to honor the man and pay your respects.

Thank you, Mike. So will I. It'll be so bittersweet, but yes. And Bruce? We all have a lot of business friends and people you see all the time and they seem very important to you. But there's one thing I tell my kids, which is the people who really matter in your life could probably fit into an SUV.

At the end of the day, you're worried about opinions and you're worried about stuff. They could probably fit into an SUV. And that's so I'm pleased that you feel. fit into his SUV, Steve, that you mattered to him. And the only thing I would say in conclusion is I would be extremely proud if any of my daughters and sons, granddaughters and grandsons became like Ken Dryden became accomplished like him. Whether they succeeded in great things or small things, that would be a great legacy for me to see if my kids and grandkids do that. Well said. Thank you, Bruce Dobigan for making the trek to the TMDS studio. And Mr. Paken,

I'll see you at TMLX20 on September 25th. Yes, you will. Thanks for doing this, Steve. Thanks for doing this, Bruce. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, indeed. And that brings us to the end of our 1,758th show.

Go to Torontomike.com for all your Toronto mic needs. Much love to all who made this possible. That's Patreon. like you, go to patreon.com slash Toronto Mike and become a member today, Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Toronto's Waterfront BIA, Recycle My Electronics.C.A, Blue Sky Agency, and Ridley Funeral Home. See you tomorrow when my special guest is 90210's own Kathleen Robertson. We're going to be able to be. You know, I'm going to be able to be.

So, I'm going to be able to be. Thank you. You know, I'm going to be able to be. I'm not I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to

I'm I'm I'm I'm the I'm and So,

you know, Thank you.