I'm trying to figure out how the bidding for No. 29's rookie card got so high -- is it the Montreal jersey on the front or the Cornell cartoon on the back? ;-)
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2735010508&category=23848
Professionally graded cards are apparently all the rage these days. While finding a 30 year-old HOFer rookie card that earns a Mint grade is ridiculously rare, some of us are just happy with our dinged-up versions. :-)
Post Edited (06-17-03 13:53)
Always knew Ken was a grand gars.
Perhaps there's a reason those eBay bidders went bonkers.
Here's an SI dispatch about the '71 Stanley Cup Finals, which Montreal won in 7 games over Chicago:
"The Canadiens really won the Cup because of the play of two rookies -- Goalie Ken Dryden and Forward Rejean Houle, or Hooley, as Bobby Hull's shadow was known in Chicago. "If it weren't for that Dryden," said Boston's Phil Esposito before the seventh game of the Montreal-Chicago series, "the Canadiens would have been on vacation five weeks ago."
Dryden entered the playoffs as the veteran of only six NHL games -- all victories. Just up from the minors, he carried the Canadiens past the Bruins in the first round, played superbly against Minnesota in the second and then by thwarting the Black Hawks won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable of all the Cup players."
It's just impossible to comprehend today the shock caused by that first-round upset of the mighty Bruins. The headline on the SI cover--above even the magazine title--after the series read "CATASTROPHE IN BOSTON." The lead-in to the article (by BC grad and later SI editorial chief Mark Mulvoy) went: "...Bobby Orr's Bostonians fell before the Canadien mystique and a fabulous rookie in the nets."
Ken made 260 saves in the seven games--including 49 in game 5 (a 7-3 loss) and 46 in the deciding game 7 (a 4-2 win). He picked up an assist in game 6. Esposito--who had 76 goals and 152 points in the regular season--alone had 11 shots (no goals) in game 1 and 10 shots (one goal) in game 5. The Bruins had finished 24 points ahead of Montreal in the regular season while setting 34 NHL records.
Two Bruins quotes--
Bobby Orr: "Dryden was better than we had ever dreamed."
Esposito: "In 1968 Gump Worsley was like St. Peter at the pearly gates against us. The next year that little Roggy Vachon robbed me blind. And now these bleeping Canadiens come up with Dryden."
Really obscure trivia: Dryden was drafted in the third round--#14 overall--by the Bruins in the 1964 draft. Drafted next at #15 that year by the Rangers was future Cornell teammate Gordie Lowe, who played on the 1970 NCAA championship team. In round four (#21 overall), the Rangers drafted Syl Apps, Jr., daddy of the Princeton center whose faceoff wins led to the Tigers' come-from-behind win in the 1999 ECAC quarterfinals. (Apps, Jr., graduated from Queen's University after spending one year at Princeton.)
Post Edited (06-18-03 21:17)
The game I remember well in the Bruins series was Game 2. The Canadiens were down 5-1 in the 2nd, and Ken was making great save after great save. He's down 5-1 and I'm thinking that I've never seen a goalie make so many great saves in a game. The Habs come back to win 7-5 and even the series. and despite the five goals, everyone suddenly realizes that the guy in nets is the difference. Note: I did the first year of my MBA at McGill (it seemed like a logical place for a hockey nut to go), before transferring back to Cornell to complete my degree, so I watched every second of the series, which probably wasn't on TV in the states unless you lived in the Boston area.
And speaking of that Montreal-Boston series in 1971, here's one last item on the Cornell grad:
"Midway through the third period of last Sunday's showdown between Montreal and Boston, the old seigneurs and brash young lords of hockey, Ken Dryden stretched all 42 inches of his left arm across the mouth of the Canadien net and speared a couldn't-miss shot by Phil Esposito, Public Enemy No. 1 to goaltenders, having scored the criminal total of 76 goals during the season, stared at Dryden, cursed him -- "You thieving giraffe!" -- and then slammed his curved stick against the glass behind the goal. "I looked at the faces of the Bruins," Dryden said later, "and I could see it all so clearly. They all looked defeated."
The Bruins were defeated, and it was Dryden, with help from the Mahavolich brothers, Peter and Frank, and some of that inexhaustible Montreal pride that upset them 4-2 in the Boston Garden in the seventh game of their wild and wicked Stanley Cup series ..."