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Game (20th Anniversary Edition), The
by Ken Dryden
A sports celebrity with staying power.
Former Montreal Canadiens' star goalie Ken Dryden is not
your typical sports celebrity. He's only done one commercial
endorsement, and once he realized what he had done, he never did another one again.
As he points out in The Game, when a celebrity does a commercial
endorsement, everybody loses. The celebrity loses because he is put in a
box where he feels like he can't be himself for fear of compromising his
public personae; and the public loses because the celebrity is put on a
pedestal, leaving the rest of us to feel like we don't measure up.
When it was first released in 1983, The Game was heralded by critics as
“The sports book of the year…or maybe the century,” and with its
re-release in this 20th anniversary edition, which includes a new chapter
by the author reflecting on the last two decades in hockey, it would
appear to have exceeded even that lofty praise, by remaining significant in
the 21st century.
During Dryden's eight years with the Canadiens, they won the Stanley Cup
six times, and the book shows what it was like on a day-to-day basis to be
a part of that winning team.
Playing professional hockey can make for an unsettled life. “I'm always on
the way to some place else; in contact with families, friends, and outside
interests, but never quite attaching onto any of them.”
While casting a backward glance at the history of the game, he also
profiles many of the team's players, including Guy LaFleur and Serge
Savard, while illuminating Scotty Bowman's coaching style. He also shares
the highlights of his career, many of which keep you on the edge of your
seat, capturing the excitement of the game, as if we were in the stands
when they happened.
Looking back on his hockey career upon his retirement, Dryden writes with
trepidation, “What is to become of me?” “If it is true that a sports
career prolongs adolescence, it is also true that when that career ends,
it deposits a player into premature middle age.”
But he knew the time had come: “I hold back, giving less of myself, I find
that I'm losing my enthusiasm for the game. In an athlete, it is not the
legs that go first, it is the enthusiasm that drives the legs.”
Determined to ride off into the sunset while still riding high, Dryden
hung up his skates in 1979, but he didn't lose his love for the game he
first started playing with neighborhood kids, in his paved backyard as a
child. In 1997, he became the president of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Most of what Dryden wrote about the game in 1983 is still valid today,
including his slant on violence in hockey. “Anger and frustration can be
released within the rules, by skating faster, by shooting harder,” he
writes, “a right hook given is a body-check missed, and by permitting
fighting, the NHL discourages determined, inspired play as retaliation.”
Title: Game (20th Anniversary Edition), The
Author: Ken Dryden
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN: 0470833556
Review written by: Marc Duane Anderson
Reviewer's Rating:8.5
Reader's Rating: 8.63
Reader's Votes: 14
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