The Game

by Ken Dryden

The backyard was not a training ground. In all the time I spent there, I don’t remember ever thinking I would be an NHL goalie, or even hoping I could be one. In backyard games, I dreamed I was Sawchuk or Hall, Mahovlich or Howe; I never dreamed I would be like them. There seemed no connection between the backyard and Maple Leaf Gardens; there seemed no way to get to there from here. If we ever thought about that, it never concerned us; we just played. It was here in the backyard that we learned hockey. It was here we got close to it, we got inside it, and it got inside us. It was here that our inextricable bond with the game was made. Many years have now passed, the game has grown up and been complicated by things outside it, yet still the backyard remains untouched, unchanged, my unseverable link to that time, and that game.