Ken Dryden and Prosthetic Memory
December 2, 2013 § 8 Comments
On Saturday night, I went to the Bruins’ game with a buddy. Those who know me know that the only thing on God’s Green Earth I hate are the fucking Bruins. My buddy, John, is a Bruins’ fan. He has no love lost for my Canadiens de Montréal. And everytime he goes on and on about the Big Bad Bruins of the early 70s, the teams of his childhood, I say two words to him: Ken Dryden.
For those of you who don’t know, the Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup in 1970 and 1972. They were a big, rugged team led by Phil Esposito, Wayne Cashman and, of course, Number 4, Bobby Orr. They were far and away the best team in hockey in the early 70s. But in 1971, something happened that disrupted their reign: the Montréal Canadiens. The Habs weren’t that good in 1971. They had won the Stanley Cup in 1969, but in 1970, they were the first Habs team to miss the playoffs since 1948. And the Habs wouldn’t miss the playoffs again until 1995. In 1970-71, they were an average team.
But then, in the spring, a call-up from the American Hockey League took over the Habs’ nets. Ken Dryden was his name. In the first round of the playoffs that year, the Habs took on the Big Bad Bruins. The Bruins finished with 121 points in 78 games, 12 more than the 2nd place New York Rangers. The Habs finished a full 24 points back. But the Canadiens knocked off the defending champs in the first round in 7 games, finally eliminating the Bruins in the hostile confines of the old Boston Garden. The Habs, riding Dryden’s brilliance, went on to win the Stanley Cup over the Chicago Blackhawks.
I wasn’t born in 1971, it would be a full two years until I made my début. My first hockey memories are from 1976 or so, I vaguely remember seeing a game between the Canadiens and Vancouver Canucks on our old black and white TV, and my dad took me to the Stanley Cup parade that spring in Montréal. But. Just as with Paul Henderson’s series-winning goal against the Soviets in 1972, Ken Dryden’s run in the spring of 1971 is burned into my memory.
How does this happen? Alison Landsberg’s 2004 book, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture, attempts to explain. Due to the onslaught of mass media in our lives, we are increasingly able to assimilate the memory of things we did not experience. Thus, I can see, in my mind’s eye, the incredible artistry of Ken Dryden in the spring of 1971 before I was born, and long before I had any sentient thoughts.
From where we sit in 2013, almost 2014, nearly a decade since Landsberg published her book (and nearly two decades since her argument was made for the first time in an article in one of those 90s books about the “cyber-world” and “information super-highway”), the argument seems rather obvious. But it wasn’t a decade ago.
And yet, whilst Landsberg focuses on the proliferation of mass media, it is also clear that the internet plays a very clear role in the formation of prosthetic memory for her. In the case of Ken Dryden, my memories were made in the 1980s. In 1984 and again in 1986, the Habs had young, hot goalies in net to start the playoffs. Steve Penney carried a pretty lousy team to the semi-finals in 1984 and two years later, Patrick Roy carried a mediocre team all the way to the Cup. Both years, Hockey Night in Canada ran endless Dryden video, and talked about Dryden. The newspapers I read, all the way out in Vancouver, talked about Dryden. The Hockey News, of which I was a dedicated reader, talked about Dryden. I went out and bought Dryden’s book, The Game, with my own money because of the 1986 playoffs and the myth-making. And while, clearly, mass media was central to the formation of my prosthetic Dryden memories as a kid in the 80s, this is long before the internet.
The interesting thing is that, when I taught in Montréal, at both Concordia University and John Abbott College, my students, who were born in the late 80s and early 90s, long after Dryden retired, and at the height of Roy’s brilliance, knew about the legends of Ken Dryden, as if they were born with fully formed prosthetic memories.
I read an article on the BBC’s website today about how memories can be transferred from generation to generation through biology. A study of mice at Emory University in Atlanta has demonstrated how this works. For the study, a generation of lab mice were trained to fear the smell of cherry blossoms. This fear was passed on to their children and grandkids, even though the children and grandchildren had never experienced anything negative surrounding the scent of cherry blossoms.
Maybe the legends of the Montréal Canadiens are passed on this way, from father to son and daughter. Maybe this is why I can see in my mind’s eye Howie Morenz rushing up the ice in the late 1920s, when my grandfather was just a lad?
Matthew Barlow 
I was a wee lass in 1971 and can thankfully remember Dryden’s run. Could prosthetic memories be unformed? The Houle era was highly forgettable.
I’m afraid the Houle era isn’t a prosthetic memory, it’s a real one. Those can only be killed through intensive therapy.
I see Eddie Shore giving Howie Morenz a hip check in my mind’s eye.
I see Howie Morenz with a Stanley Cup.
I see Eddie Shore surrounded by four Hart Trophies and two Stanley Cups.
I see Howie Morenz surrounded by 2 Art Ross Trophies, 3 Hart Trophies, and 3 Stanley Cups.
I see Eddie Shore ranked as #10 on the Hockey News All-Time Greatest NHL Players List and Howie Morenz ranked #15 on the same list.
I see Howie Morenz as the greatest player of his generation and Eddie Shore as a typical classless, semi-homicidal Bruins goon.