Following a sport via the internet as I do the NHL it can be strange to consider how I relate to the sport and my team and the players on it. Over the past two seasons this became easier as I subscribed to NHLTV and watched every game, but what is such a large aspect of my life only really exists for 2-3 hour periods a few times a week. When the game is done that's it. Maybe I'm online and post about it on a message board occasionally but that's not the same as watching a game and all of the things which go into that. Hockey isn't there where I live, there's very little mention of it, there's definitely nothing Avalanche-related.
Even in watching a game, how can I relate to the players? It's not like seeing a sporting event or any other kind of public performance live where you can see in person someone who you enjoy endlessly in your own privacy. If I go and see a band live I can see the sweat dripping off the people on-stage, see how they move about, interact with one another. People who I identified with intimately are now more real, more human to me and I gain a greater appreciation of what they do. Same goes for sports. When you're there in person you see and experience them in a way which is different, and you feel more intimately connected with them.
Aside from formulaic, identical interviews there is none of this in my NHL-following life. I might feel as if I know Nathan MacKinnon intimately after all of the first star interviews he has this season but even with that in mind, he's not the most expressive person I've ever seen. Every interview follows the same pattern - as if in every response to a question his brain is trying to think of the least objectionable sequence of words which will let him get back to the locker room as quickly as possible, then a burst of excitement as he finds them and then his mouth tries to get them out all at the one time. It almost mirrors his playing style, when he gets the puck and just goes. Perhaps fittingly for this metaphor, in those moments too, he is untouchable.
So how, then, is the regular fan to feel any sort of connection to these millionaires playing a game for a living on a different continent to me? How is anyone to do that, when they grow up dreaming of playing for their team but only dream of the playing part, none of the life which goes along with it?
It appears I have found the answer in a book published nine years before I was born, about an NHL twenty three years before I knew what it was. The Game by Ken Dryden seems to be followed by the tagline "The best sports book ever" and while the North American use of "sports" is always hilariously myopic and insular, there's a decent case for this one in particular to be accurate. A unique set of circumstances allowed someone like Dryden to play hockey and be capable of noting its nuances and chronicling them in the way he does, but that's really part of the book's charm. That's what he notices all the time through his career, on and off the ice, whether it's the people he sees outside the rink, the things his teammates say and do before games or how he plays in certain buildings.
I like The Game for more than just the observations he makes though. And even for more of describing an understanding of the NHL which is completely alien to me - this is pre-Gretzky, remember. Above all else, this is a human book. I'm sure watching Dryden and the Canadiens in the 70s there would have been no doubt that they were invincible, unquestionable, and that the players mirrored that. But they aren't. They weren't. Dryden, for his incomparable statistics, definitely wasn't. The day-to-day insights into how the Canadiens were run are interesting on a basic level. I have no idea how NHL teams are/were run, so to learn first-hand from someone who was there is simply an enjoyable addendum to something I follow daily.
Beyond that though having the insight of someone who knows the game so well - but not completely as he'd be at pains to point out - from someone who's so measured and thoughtful about the world outside of hockey as well is a brilliant combination. The off-ice stuff is as interesting as the on-ice, of what it's like to juggle studying law with being the best goalie in the world, what it's like to be and feel like an outsider in a place where you're revered, it's all done so well it never feels too self-effacing, which it could have done if Dryden wasn't as good at writing as he proves to be.
So much of what he describes ends up being in the unsaid, unquantifiable that it doesn't really make sense to try and describe it too much but I pretty much don't have a bad thing to say about it. It's interesting to me to read about the NHL from this perspective considering expansion and lockouts and butterfly goaltending and Europeans and everything else since 1979. As much as his final season was a time where Dryden felt personally that change was inevitable, the amount that there's been in the NHL as a whole since then provides an interesting comparison to have in mind throughout. When he writes about playing, you appreciate the pressures and nuances in a way you might never have before. And if nothing else, there's the right mixture of confidence and doubt to make him consistently sympathetic, which when coupled with the thoughtful nature of his observations just makes it an easy, yet rewarding, read.
I have the 30th anniversary edition with two post-scripts, one about the changes the NHL has seen since his retirement and 2003, the other about the day he got to spend with the Stanley Cup. Both, particularly the latter, are appropriate additions to the things he wrote about originally. You'll probably shed a tear at the second one, when you see first hand what hockey can and does mean to people.
With everything positive I've said the only complaint I have is that this book will probably ruin my expectations of athletes and journalists. I read Blood Feud a month or two ago and it's nothing compared to this. And every hockey player I've seen, none of them will have insights like this which I feel I can relate to. I suppose that's how I'd sum up The Game. Dryden takes what is unrelatable and makes it so, while freely admitting at times that he doesn't quite know what that is. That's a talent beyond many successful writers, and about the best compliment I could pay him.
