Hall of Famer, ‘best goalie in the world,’ died last month at age 78
© Dave Stubbs/NHL.com
MONTREAL — The Bell Centre crowd rose to its feet more than 18 years ago in a thunderous celebration of Ken Dryden, the legendary goalie’s No. 29 retired, a banner pulled to the arena rafters during a ceremony on Jan. 29, 2007.
Tuesday, in a stirring, emotional tribute paid before the Montreal Canadiens’ 2025-26 home opener, the crowd rose again, this time to salute a team icon who had died of cancer on Sept. 5 at age 78.
“Ken was the best goalie in the world during his career with the Montreal Canadiens,” Geoff Molson, the Canadiens’ owner, president and chief operating officer, said on Tuesday afternoon while standing with Dryden’s monument in the team’s history-celebrating Place des Canadiens plaza.
“He was also extremely proud to have been part of and contribute to the most storied hockey team in history. Off the ice, Ken was a perfect gentleman, always willing to engage with fans, and he exemplified the role of an alumnus representing the organization.”
© Dave Stubbs/NHL.com
Geoff Molson, the Canadiens’ owner, president and chief executive officer, with Ken Dryden’s retired number monument and a replica of the goalie’s first NHL mask, in the team’s Place des Canadiens outside Bell Centre on Oct. 14, 2025.
The five-minute pregame tribute was narrated by Bob Gainey, a Hall of Famer, former Canadiens captain and teammate of Dryden, reading from a revision of the goalie’s seminal 1983 book “The Game.”
The Canadiens’ salute came 55 years and one month after Dryden first arrived in Montreal with Lynda, his wife of four months. The newlyweds were stepping into a bubbling cauldron of Quebec provincial politics as he prepared to begin law studies at McGill University and attend Canadiens training camp.
Hockey, of course, would be just a part of Dryden’s life. He was a lawyer, professor and television producer, an Olympic hockey analyst for ABC-TV in 1980, 1984 and 1988 — he called the “Miracle On Ice” game with Al Michaels in 1980 — as well as an elected federal politician, author or co-author of an impressive library of books, and a newspaper and magazine columnist and essayist.
On Oct. 8, he was saluted by the Toronto Maple Leafs before their season opener at Scotiabank Arena, a 5-2 win against the Canadiens. Dryden served as the Maple Leafs’ president from 1997-2004.
Toronto’s ceremony followed a half-hour tribute on Sept. 17 in Canada’s House of Commons. Dryden was a Liberal Member of Parliament from 2004-11 and the country’s Minister of Social Development from 2004-06 following his work as Youth Commissioner for his native province of Ontario.
© Lewis Portnoy/Hockey Hall of Fame
Ken Dryden in action during the Canadiens’ 8-1 win against the Blues at St. Louis Arena on Nov. 9, 1976.
There are many impressive statistics attached to Dryden’s body of hockey work that earned him his election into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1983:
He won the Stanley Cup six times from 1971-79, including four consecutively from 1976-79.
Dryden was voted winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy in 1971 as the most valuable player of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, not yet even a rookie and before he’d lost a single regular-season game.
He would be voted the winner of the 1971-72 Calder Trophy as the NHL’s top rookie, the last Canadiens player so honored until defenseman Lane Hutson won the award last season. On Monday, Hutson, 21, signed an eight-year contract with Montreal, matching the number of seasons Dryden played in the NHL, all with the Canadiens.
© Denis Brodeur/Getty Images
Ken Dryden watches 1970s action from the Canadiens’ Montreal Forum bench.
And Dryden won the Vezina Trophy five times between 1973-79, the final three shared with teammate Michel Larocque. In that era, the Vezina (now voted to the NHL’s best goalie by the general managers) was awarded to the goaltender(s) who played a minimum of 25 games for the team allowing the fewest regular-season goals.
But this rarely quoted, staggering Dryden statistic might be his greatest of all:
From the start of his career, he played 228 regular-season games before losing two consecutively, a span from March 14, 1971, to Feb. 15, 1976, when a road loss to the Philadelphia Flyers followed a defeat at home against the Vancouver Canucks three nights earlier.
Ranked second in that category is Bob Froese of the Flyers, who played 64 games before losing two in a row.
© Hockey Hall of Fame
Ken Dryden kicks at a shot during an early 1970s game, the puck seen just outside the goal post.
As did his 2007 jersey retirement event, the tribute Tuesday covered Dryden’s rich hockey career and legacy as the goalie of the 1970s powerhouse teams. On the Canadiens bench were 12 alumni, all of whom had played with him.
In 2007, when the 12th of 15 numbers (for 18 players) the Canadiens have honored with an arena banner was raised, Dryden was joined on Bell Centre ice by Lynda, their children, Sarah and Michael, their children’s spouses, and Sarah’s 3-week-old daughter, the Drydens’ first grandchild.
The baby slept through the ceremony in her mother’s arms while wearing a hand-knit No. 29 sweater that a 1970s fan had sent to the goalie as a gift, Dryden proudly announcing that Sarah and Michael had each worn it as infants at their first Canadiens Christmas party.
A standing ovation of more than three minutes preceded the goalie’s introduction by Al MacNeil, the Canadiens coach when Dryden made his NHL debut on March 14, 1971, after being called up from the Montreal Voyageurs of the American Hockey League.
© Phillip MacCallum/Getty Images
Molson (now Bell) Centre ice before the retirement of Ken Dryden’s No. 29 on Jan. 29, 2007.
Other speakers included Dryden’s older brother, Dave, a fellow NHL goalie; and Russian Vladislav Tretiak, a friendly goaltending rival against whom Dryden famously played in the historic 1972 Summit Series and in the 1975 New Year’s Eve game at the Forum between the Canadiens and Central Red Army team.
Of the speaking group, only Tretiak is still alive.
“How do I thank you?” Dryden asked the packed arena that night, repeating the question in French.
He then touched upon Canadiens management, teammates and opponents, legendary anthem singer Roger Doucet, countless fans and many of those who toiled behind the scenes, including the club’s medical, training and front office staff, the head of the usherettes and even the attendant of the players’ family room in the Forum.
© Montreal Canadiens; Richard Wolowicz/Getty Images
The front of the four-page souvenir program for Ken Dryden’s Jan. 29, 2007 jersey retirement, and wearing vintage-design pads and gloves borrowed from Carey Price for the Canadiens’ Centennial alumni skate-around at Bell Centre on Dec. 4, 2009.
There was no one more thoughtful or erudite than Dryden when he was inspired by a subject. He spoke in detailed paragraphs, never a sound bite, a few hundred words of nourishing analysis always better than a fast-food cliche.
Upon his November 2014 induction into the Quebec Sports Hall of Fame, Dryden reflected at length about his first days in the city that would be his adopted home.
“Arriving in Montreal in September 1970 was another great adventure,” he said, speaking of his road from minor hockey in Toronto-suburban Etobicoke to the NCAA ranks with Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. “I had no idea what the next decade was going to bring, in any regard.
“The rest of the decade was a complete surprise to Lynda and me in every way, ending up playing with the Canadiens. How good we were during that time, living in the province of Quebec, what that was like during the 1970s, all of that was just a surprise.
© Frank Prazak/Hockey Hall of Fame
Ken Dryden with his wife, Lynda, during the summer of 1971 in Washington, D.C. Dryden was working as a Nader Raider for Ralph Nader, a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author.
“September for me had always been about school and a training camp. You arrive here, and you have no idea whether you can do it. You know that it’s the next step, but you don’t know whether it’s going to work, all you can do is arrive in a lecture hall in McGill or at the Forum for a practice. And then the rest happens, and you’ve got to find a way of making it work. So much of it is just sheer discovery.
“And certainly, it was in terms of the Canadiens training camp. The Canadiens were a team for me that existed on television, and as such the players are really 10 feet tall and they really skate and shoot 100 miles per hour, and what am I doing there? I’m from Etobicoke. I played for Humber Valley and Cornell, and none of those have any relationship at all with the Montreal Forum or the Canadiens.
“And you literally have the feeling when you’re skating out there for the first time, ‘I could get killed, literally, in the next moment.’ And if not, then certainly humiliated. Humiliation is the slow death.
© Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images
Ken Dryden’s mask sits atop a Bell Centre net during the Montreal Canadiens’ tribute on Oct. 14, 2025.
“You go out and you survive, first. And then when you survive, you might even notice every so often that you stopped a puck or almost stopped one and then you go from there.”
At his 2007 ceremony, Dryden considered aloud his life in Montreal.
“Sometimes if you’re lucky, you get really, really lucky and I got lucky,” he told the cheering crowd. “I had the chance to be here, to live in Montreal, to live in Quebec, to play at the Forum, to play for you and to be a member of the Montreal Canadiens. All of you had given me a gift — a gift that has lasted 35 years, a gift that will last a lifetime.”
On Tuesday, Dryden’s No. 29 was hanging over the deep slot in front of the net the Canadiens defend for two periods, between the No. 5 of defenseman Guy Lapointe and the No. 12 of forward Yvan Cournoyer, among banners of the six Stanley Cup titles of which he was a part.
On this night, the Canadiens and an emotional Bell Centre offered him a final gift, showering this franchise legend with great respect and deep appreciation for his work backstopping some of the greatest teams in NHL history.
Top photo: A masked Ken Dryden is seen on the scoreboard of Bell Centre during the Montreal Canadiens Oct. 14, 2025 tribute, the goalie’s retired No. 29 lit in the upper left.
Hockey News