Dave Dryden's date with history nearly eluded late NHL goalie

The historic first meeting in a game between goaltending brothers Dave and Ken Dryden wasn't supposed to happen that night in 1971. At least, not in the view just hours before the game of one of the goalies about to make that history.

Hockey is mourning the loss of Dave Dryden, who died Tuesday at age 81 of complications from chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension surgery.

Dryden played 17 seasons in the NHL and WHA, from 1962-79, later working with the NHL on refinements to equipment to better protect players. During his career, it was his pioneering that married a helmet shell and birdcage front, the combination replacing the fiberglass mask to become the standard in goaltending at every level.

Dryden's loss is being felt far beyond hockey, too, his influential work as an elementary school principal and teacher, especially in special education, having touched countless young lives. He also devoted enormous energy to the Sleeping Children Around The World charity founded by his parents, Murray and Margaret, providing bed kits to needy children in developing countries around the world.

But in hockey, Dryden is probably best known for a single NHL game and the handshake that followed it, played at the Montreal Forum on March 20, 1971 between his visiting Buffalo Sabres and brother Ken's Montreal Canadiens.

Dave Dryden with the major junior Toronto Marlboros and in a team portrait in 1959-60. Turofsky/Hockey Hall of Fame

Ken Dryden idolized Dave, six years his senior. Growing up in Toronto, Dave was always a goalie, and it seemed natural that Ken would follow him into a net.

"If I had to guess why I became a goalie, I'd say it was because of [Dave] and my emulation of him," Ken told author Dick Irvin Jr. for the latter's 1995 book "In The Crease: Goaltenders Look At Life in the NHL."

"When there's a difference of six years between kids in a family, you're not rivals. … I became a bit of a novelty to him and he an idol to me. … While I wasn't as good as my brother, I could cope. So I was allowed to be in the periphery of the action."

Dave had 77 NHL games to his name for the New York Rangers, Chicago Black Hawks and Sabres, Ken just two for the Canadiens, when the Sabres arrived in Montreal for their game on that March night in 1971.

"I've been told that Rogie [Vachon] is playing," Dryden recalled, Canadiens coach Al MacNeil having decided to go with his veteran to avoid a late-season head-to-head media circus.

"I was talking to my father on the phone and he said, 'I think I'm going to come up (to Montreal from Toronto).' I said he could come if he liked but I wasn't playing and suggested he not come up because he would be disappointed."

New York Rangers goalie Dave Dryden clears the puck away from his net on Feb. 3, 1962, his first NHL game as an emergency backup for injured Gump Worsley. At left is Rangers defenseman Harry Howell, Toronto Maple Leafs forward Frank Mahovlich at right. Imperial Oil - Turofsky/Hockey Hall of Fame

The game began with Sabres coach Punch Imlach starting Dave, hoping MacNeil would seize the moment, two brothers never before having faced each other in the NHL. Indeed, the Drydens had never played against each other at any level of hockey.

But MacNeil didn't blink, starting Vachon.

Imlach, a high-decibel, flamboyant showman, yanked Dave at the first face-off in place of Joe Daley, Buffalo's second goalie.

"I thought starting the brothers right off the bat would be a [heck] of a deal for the crowd," Imlach said after the game. "But MacNeil didn't want to give the fans a run for their money until he had to."

That time came at 13:07 of the second period when Toronto's Eddie Shack dropped Vachon with a shot below the belt, leaving him unable to continue.

"You know when goalies get hit they go down, then they always get up and play again," Ken Dryden told Irvin Jr. "Even at a moment like that I didn't take it very seriously. But geez, he's still down. I mean, he's not getting up. I don't know if it was Al or one of the players who said to me, 'You'd better start loosening up. You might have to go in.'

Dave Dryden in a posed 1965-66 Chicago Black Hawks portrait. Le Studio du hockey/Hockey Hall of Fame

"The magic of it was the fact that our father was there watching the game. He had no right to imagine that anything like that was going to happen. He just took a chance (to come to Montreal), and it happened."

Murray Dryden, one of a Forum crowd of 17,533 and the rest of hockey witnessed history, Ken skating to the Canadiens net, Imlach immediately pulling Daley and sending Dave into Buffalo's goal.

Dave allowed two goals on the 14 shots he faced and Ken yielded two on 21 Buffalo shots in Montreal's 5-2 win. Daley allowed the first two Canadiens goals and defenseman Guy Lapointe iced the victory with an empty-net goal at 17:58 of the third period.

To the delight of the crowd, the brothers shook hands at center ice at game's end, Dave happy for the occasion and Ken clearly relieved it was over.

Ken Dryden finished the 1970-71 regular season with a 6-0-0 record, then went 12-8 through the three-round Stanley Cup Playoffs against the Boston Bruins, Minnesota North Stars and finally the Black Hawks to lead the Canadiens to the 1971 championship.

It's one of the great statistics in his career that he won the Stanley Cup and the Conn Smythe Trophy as the MVP of the postseason before he'd lost a single regular-season game, winning the Calder Trophy as rookie of the year in 1971-72.

Chicago Black Hawks goalie Dave Dryden defends against Toronto's Ron Ellis, defenseman Tom Reid helping out. Graphic Artists/Hockey Hall of Fame

The brothers faced each other once more in the regular season, in a 3-3 Forum tie on Oct. 28, 1972, again ending with a handshake, and then twice in the six-game first round of the 1973 playoffs -- 2-1 and 7-3 Montreal victories in Games 1 and 2 before Buffalo coach Joe Crozier switched to Roger Crozier for Games 3-6.

Dave and Ken were unwillingly centerpieces in the classic Imlach cloak-and-dagger that developed in that series.

On Feb. 10, 1973 at the Forum, Canadiens coach Scotty Bowman had called for referee Ron Wicks to check Dave Dryden's stick, suspecting the blade was too tall. Wicks ruled it to be legal and Montreal was fined $100 for the failed protest.

"While we're measuring things," Dave sniffed postgame, "why don't they take a look at my brother's pads? They've got to be 3 inches too wide."

The seed was planted and the unhappy Sabres exacted their revenge before Game 3 of the playoffs. Buffalo public relations director Paul Wieland, a garage-league goalie with a keen interest in the position, snuck into the empty Canadiens dressing room at Buffalo Memorial Auditorium armed with a tape measure and determined Ken's pads were a fraction wider than the allowable 10 inches.

Buffalo Sabres goalie Dave Dryden makes a save in St. Louis against the Blues during the 1970-71 season, Skip Krake in the background. Lewis Portnoy/Hockey Hall of Fame

Imlach waited for the perfect moment. Down 3-1 in the series, the score tied 2-2 in the final minute of Game 5 at the Forum, Joe Crozier called referee Bruce Hood to the bench and protested Ken's pads. Incensed, knowing Imlach's flair for the dramatic, Hood demanded the final 29 seconds be played while a tape measure was found.

Sitting on the Sabres bench was Dave Dryden, not knowing which way to look since his pads were almost surely illegal, too.

The intermission dragged on with Hood, president Clarence Campbell, League referee-in-chief Scotty Morrison and Montreal coach Scotty Bowman all involved, Bowman by then demanding that Roger Crozier's pads be measured, too.

The Canadiens had needed to protest before overtime, Campbell told them, dismissing Bowman's request. Ken Dryden was penalized two minutes for illegal equipment, Dave Dryden sat on the Sabres bench unsure whether to be happy or not that his brother had been nailed, and Buffalo began overtime with a power play.

"When the term 'illegal equipment' came over the public-address, Margaret and I cringed," Murray Dryden joked at the time, the goalies' parents at the game.

The Sabres didn't score with the man advantage, but Rene Robert did at 9:18, pushing the series to a sixth game that the Canadiens would win 4-2 back in Buffalo, eliminating the Sabres.

Dave Dryden celebrates his brother, Ken, at the latter's No. 29 sweater retirement at Montreal's Bell Centre on Jan. 29, 2007. In the background at left are ceremony emcee Richard Garneau and Ken Dryden and his wife, Lynda. Phillip MacCallum/Getty Images

If the playoff skullduggery was big news at the moment, it will be the first game in which the Dryden brothers faced each other that will, and should, be best remembered.

At the final siren in 1971, an uncomfortable Ken Dryden headed toward the Canadiens bench, satisfied with the win but unhappy that Dave had taken the loss. He never enjoyed playing against his older brother, for two reasons: It was a distraction, and to win, he needed his teammates to score on someone who'd been an idol since his youth.

Ultimately, Dave and Ken Dryden would face each other six times in the regular season, plus their two playoff meetings. Ken held a 4-1-1 edge, Dave's only win coming Dec. 10, 1972 in Buffalo in a 4-2 Sabres victory.

Many memories will wash back to Ken at Dave's funeral in Toronto on Sunday. Among them will likely be the boyhood games in their yard, two brothers rotating in and out of the net their father had fashioned out of $6.60 of 2-by-4s bought at a local lumber yard, the frame of a home-made regulation-size net laced with chicken wire.

Their sister, Judy, a nurse, will remember "the prison" she has joked about, "bars across all the windows on the ground floor of our house so the boys playing hockey wouldn't break them."

From that yard, landscaped with ball hockey-friendly cement, to a historic Montreal Forum game in 1971 and for more than a half-century beyond, the Dryden brothers were as thick as blood.

"I didn't want any attention after that first game," Ken has said of their first NHL meeting. "I just wanted to get off the ice at the finish.

"But Dave was smart enough to wait for me at center ice. He extended his hand. We shook. And it seems that a lot of people enjoyed it."

Top photo: Dave Dryden with the 1959-60 Toronto St. Michaels Majors at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. Turofsky/Hockey Hall of Fame