The Game

by Ken Dryden

It is the morning after a special night, and everything out of reach, out of mind, a few hours ago now seems possible again.

It is not fun to feel a team break down, to find weakness where I always found strength;

There is something remarkably strong about a team that wins; and something remarkably weak about that same team when it doesn’t.

After years of ignoring time, I have become sensitive to it.

more commonly it works the other way—the great player has everyone around him to make him better.

For a good opponent defines a player or a team.

Sick and tired of being sick and tired. It is how February feels and it’s how I feel this morning.

The Italians have a phrase, inventa la partita. Translated, it means to “invent the game.”

It is in free time that the special player develops, not in the competitive expedience of games, in hour-long practices once a week, in mechanical devotion to packaged, processed, coaching-manual, hockey-school skills.

But by creating celebrity and mistaking it for substance, too often we turn celebrity into hero, and lose again.