Habs to retire Dryden, Savard's numbers
Canadian Press
9/20/2006 12:58:41 PM
MONTREAL (CP) - The picture from the early 1970s spoke volumes about Ken Dryden, Serge Savard and the Montreal Canadiens.
Savard is carrying the puck out from behind the net with Buffalo's dangerous sniper Rick Martin in hot pursuit, but Dryden is standing nonchalantly in his crease, one elbow on the crossbar, with the side of the net gaping open.
"You'd think I'd be a bit concerned, but that tells the story of Serge," Dryden said Wednesday, holding up the photo at a Bell Centre news conference. "If Serge has the puck and it's there, it's not going to stay there. It will find it's way out of the zone."
It was a familiar scene back when the Canadiens were hockey's No. 1 power through most of the 1970s. And the team will pay tribute to two of its greatest players when it retires the jerseys of Savard and Dryden this season.
Savard's No. 18 will be raised to the Bell Centre ceiling during a ceremony Nov. 18 before a game against the Atlanta Thrashers.
Dryden's No. 29 will go up on Jan. 29 before a game against the Ottawa Senators.
The team likes to match the jersey numbers with the dates.
The announcement was to have been made last week, but was postponed because of the shootings at Dawson College that left one student dead and 20 wounded.
"Personally, I was very lucky, I was blessed, to play for the Montreal Canadiens," said Savard, one of the top defencemen of his era. "To play for the best team in the world. To play with the best players in the world. It was a real nice ride."
Savard won eight Stanley Cups in 15 seasons with Montreal from 1967-68 to 1980-81, taking the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP in 1969.
But he is best remembered as the senior man of the so-called Big Three with Guy Lapointe and Larry Robinson - perhaps the most gifted defence trio in NHL history.
And he may have been even better if two horrific knee injuries early in his career had not claimed a little of his speed. Still, he was a dynamic two-way defenceman, especially skilled at recovering pucks and moving them out of the zone.
He retired in 1981, but soon after returned to play two last seasons for the Winnipeg Jets, where his friend and former teammate John Ferguson was general manager.
Savard was named GM of the Canadiens in 1983 and built Stanley Cup teams in 1986 and 1993 before he was let go in 1995. He is now a successful businessman.
Dryden, a law graduate from Cornell, won six Cups in only eight seasons with Montreal from 1971 to 1979. He won his first Cup and the Conn Smythe after a late-season call-up from the minors and then was named the league's rookie of the year the following season.
The image most fans hold of the lanky Dryden has him with both gloves resting on his upright stick, watching as a team crowded with stars like Guy Lafleur, Jacques Lemaire, Yvan Cournoyer and Steve Shutt terrorized the opposing goalie.
"You can lean on your stick when you know the puck is going to be at the other end," said Dryden, a five-time first team all-star.
Both Savard and Dryden played for Canada in the groundbreaking 1972 Summit series against the Soviet Union.
An oddity is that Savard was known as The Senator during his career because of his interest in politics, but he never ran for office.
Dryden was elected as MP for a Toronto riding in 2004, served in former prime minister Paul Martin's cabinet and now is a long-shot candidate for the Liberal Party leadership.
"I never noticed in the dressing room that Ken would want to be a politician," said Savard, a native of the Abitibi region in northwestern Quebec. "It was me who always had the title. I always liked talking about it, but I never wanted to do it.
"Where I come from, there were three sports - religion, politics and hockey, not necessarily in that order."
Dryden later became a successful author, served as Ontario youth commissioner and was president of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The Hamilton native, who grew up a Leafs fan, said playing for the Canadiens was about more than hockey.
It was also living through the politically turbulent 1970s, when Quebec elected its first separatist government in 1976 and Canada looked to be coming apart.
He arrived in 1970 "`not knowing what that life was going to be and discovering it in the most fascinating, challenging, difficult, proud decade of the 1970s in every dimension, and with a team as great as the Canadiens, with the best building, the best fans and all the rest of it. I mean, it gets in your bones."
A teammate of both players, Frank Mahovlich, is now in the Canadian Senate.
Neither player chose the number he made famous.
Savard said that in his day, call-ups from the minors either got No. 17 or No. 18 and he was assigned the latter.
Dryden was assigned No. 29. He later had a chance to take the number he wanted - one - but when he told his wife Linda she said "no, you're No. 29."
The Canadiens have been cautious about retiring numbers over the years, but last season, they began a program to retire some each season leading up to the club's 100th anniversary in 2009.
Last season, they finally retired No. 5 for Bernard (Boom Boom) Geoffrion, the scoring star of the 1950s who died just before his number went up to the Bell Centre ceiling in March, and No. 12 for Cournoyer and 1950s great Dickie Moore.
"In terms of numbers retired, it's a whole lot harder in Montreal than anywhere else because there's so much competition," said Dryden. "There's so many terrific players who have played for this team for a long time."
After Dryden and Savard, the Canadiens will have retired 11 numbers for 12 players.
Already retired are No. 1 for Jacques Plante, No. 2 for Doug Harvey, No. 4 for Jean Beliveau, No. 5 for Geoffrion, No. 7 for Howie Morenz, No. 9 for Maurice (Rocket) Richard, No. 10 for Lafleur, No. 12 for Moore and Cournoyer and No. 16 for Henri Richard.
Others expected to go in coming years include Robinson's No. 19 and Patrick Roy's No. 33. Another 1970s notable, current GM Bob Gainey, is another possibility. He wore No. 23.
Ken Dryden
