The Game by Ken Dryden Page A

you help the team, how you perform —they are what count. It is thin comfort.
    Many times, I have sensed in Bowman a personal loyalty beyond the team, but I have been mistaken. I always believed that he played me the way he did because he understood me. He played me often because I needed to play often to feel part of the team; he put me into a game after a bad game because he knew that the humiliation I felt wouldn’t go away until I played better; he played me on the road, when I was sick or injured, against the Islanders, Bruins, and Flyers because he knew I needed the exciting challenge that each offered.
    And when he talked to the press of my outside interests, he always spoke positively of them, as if he understood my need for distractions from the game, my need to scheme with myself to justify continuing in hockey, my need to pursue other things for their own sake. Two years ago, I allowed four goals in a first period against Vancouver, then was jeered by Forum fans the rest of the game. When I didn’t play at home for more than a month until we met the Bruins, I thought he had been protecting me, keeping me away from the Forum until we played a team against which I always played well. In fact it was none of those things; it was nothing personal at all. I played often, I played after bad games, and against the league’s best teams when I was sick or injured, because I play well then, and because when I play well, the team is better off. It is because he understands me as a goalie that he plays me when he does; he does it for the team, not for me.
    A few weeks ago, the NHL all-stars played the Soviet National Team in the Challenge Cup in New York. While I had played against the Soviets only a few times in my career, I had done poorly enough in many games that there seemed a clear and disturbing pattern to my play. Simply, I began to wonder, as others did, if I was too big to cope with the quickness and dexterity of the Soviet game.
    I had always been able to adapt before. I had moved from Jr. B. (h)ockey to college hockey, from college to the National Team to the American League to the NHL. As a seven-year-old, I played against teenagers in backyard games. I had played against teams that had seemed too good—RAC, the Weston Dodgers, North Dakota, the Bruins in 1971. Many times, I was certain I would fail. Many times, I did not want to play, afraid of being humiliated if I did. But I always managed to cope, and found a way. This was different. This was not the first time I had played the Soviets. I knew exactly what I would face. And because I did, as if finally reaching the point where a coach would send me home, I was afraid I was up against something I could not handle.
    I arrived in New York with my teammates three days before the first game. I went directly to my room and set myself a schedule, determined not to repeat the mistake I had made three years earlier.
    The night before a New Year’s Eve game with the Soviet Central Army Team in 1975, I got away from the bustle of visitors who were arriving at our house and went to a downtown hotel. There, alone with myself for twenty-four hours, I built slowly for the game, and kept on building until the game and I became a fixation. I thought and worried and filled up with doubts, I could never get mentally free enough just to play, and while the great Soviet goaltender Tretiak stopped thirty-five shots, I stopped ten in a 3-3 tie.
    This time, I would do it differently. I would keep busy, always moving, never allowing a moment alone with myself, never a chance to dwell on other games, to think/worry about those ahead. I got up early, and walked around Manhattan, shopping, looking, always moving; I went to Madison Square Garden for practice, ate a quick lunch, and walked again; I went to a movie, to another movie, ate dinner, walked, went to another movie—then did the same the next day.
    We won the first game 4-2.
    Friday was a day off. I repeated Tuesday and