A hockey great shares perspective with tennis legends

MONTREAL >> Listen carefully at the most storied corner in Canada, right here where Atwater Avenue meets Saint-catherine Street. Every hockey fan knows the intersection once was the site of the old Montreal Forum, the Wimbledon of the winter sport, 31 times the site of the Stanley Cup Final, the place where for 44 years the home team dressed beneath the words of the Canadian poet John Mccrae: “To you from failing hands we throw the torch/be yours to hold it high.”

Listen carefully and you might hear the echo of the thunderous cheers that greeted Canadiens

stars from Maurice Richard to Patrick Roy — or maybe the profound silence that met the procession of 10,000 to view the casket, placed lovingly on wooden boards at center ice in 1937, after the great Howie Morenz, the first true NHL star, died as a result of an injury in a brutal game against the Chicago Black Hawks.

Listen up, Roger Federer and Serena Williams, as you prepare to toss the torch of your sporting greatness, for the cheers are about to turn to silence. As the roar of the crowd fades, listen to the lessons of one of your predecessors in excellence. Listen to how Ken Dryden, who won six Stanley Cups in nine seasons in goal for the bleu, blanc et rouge of the beloved home team, views retirement and came to peace with life when the cheering stopped.

“Retiring from sports is a real retirement,” he told me the other day. “And that's the surprising thing. You enter retirement at a younger age than everybody else does, but you feel the same effects. In my case, I was 31, and for Roger Federer and Serena Williams, in their 40s, you are moving on from something you have done all your life. And even as you have done other things, your sport has been at the center of what you do. And you're very good. And there was always a place for you to be and a place for you to go.”

Dryden now is 75. He has been retired from hockey for four decades. He's revered at Cornell University for being the centerpiece of the last undefeated college hockey team (29-0, in 1969-1970) and here in Canada for being the winning goaltender in the famous Summit Series against the Russians 50 years ago, the subject of his ninth book, now the top Canadian nonfiction bestseller. He's served in Canada's Parliament and is enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

He might be regarded today as a man for all seasons, but for two decades he was primarily a man for the hockey season, and the rink provided him with that place to go.

“Then, just like the person who retires from an office job, up until that last Friday all of those things were true,” he continued. “But Monday comes, and most of those things aren't true anymore. You are moving to something that you're less good at, and you know you are less good at it. And over time, although you don't focus on it, you enjoy the fact that you were good at something and that people looked at you in a special way. Where does that come from now? What are you going to be good at — very good at?”

That is the question Federer and Williams face.

Dozens of athletes (Tony Romo, for example) and coaches (Bill Cowher) face it by becoming broadcasters. Minor league pitcher Blake Mcfarland faced it by becoming a sculptor. Pitcher Don Schwall, a 1961 Rookie of the Year with the Boston Red Sox, became a Pittsburgh investment specialist. (When I asked him why so many athletes lose