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We also had innumerable email exchanges over the years. Here are a few:

No one cared more about getting headshots out of the NHL than Dryden did. On April 18, 2018, I emailed him about an incident from a game the night before.

Steve Paikin: My goodness, Ken — another awful headshot. How is it that the league will probably suspend Tampa Bay Lightning forward Nikita Kucherov for a few games, yet the referees on the ice didn’t even call a two-minute minor penalty for the hit?

Ken Dryden: The NHL starts with an illogical premise, namely, that there can be a “legal” hit to the head. Then the outrageous considerations follow: Was the head the primary point of contact? Was it targeted? Did the player who got hit have his head down slightly? Did the player who hit him his body or leave his feet to make contact? Whether the hit is from a stick, an elbow, a shoulder or a fist, whether it’s intentional or accidental, legal or illegal, the brain doesn’t distinguish. Only the league distinguishes, and the result is that it can’t stop embarrassing itself with every new incident.

Dryden loved to share his criticisms of The Agenda, the TVO program I hosted for 19 years.

KD: I watched some of your show tonight. I’d never heard Peter MacKay sound so interesting, nor Peggy Nash. I hadn’t heard Jane Philpott much before, but she was really good. What does it say that they sound like this when they aren’t wearing their political hats and like something much different when they are?

SP: It may be partly because they’re out of politics. It may also be partly because our format actually gives them time to finish their sentences, so they don’t have to be as robotic and message-tracked.

KD: One of the real problems we have in dealing with any kind of big question is the absence of real public discourse. Does it happen in politics? Not even close. In the media? Ditto. If it doesn’t happen in the most obvious places, then where does it happen? I know you love politics. You do your shows in a certain way, and you do it very well. How about another way? That might be interesting.

On June 8, 2020, I saw that Sportsnet was going to rebroadcast the deciding game of the 1976 Stanley Cup Final, between the Canadiens and the Philadelphia Flyers. I emailed Dryden to let him know.

SP: I don’t know whether you ever watch your old games, but if you wanted to — you’re on!

KD: I never watch.

SP: How come?

KD: I don’t look or sound the way I think do, or the way I want to. It’s the same for any radio or television stuff. As for our games: I have an image in my head of how each player looks, and it’s been put there over hundreds of games and many years. To me, that’s what’s real, and I don’t want to start doubting that.

On September 14, 2020, Dryden really let me have it after watching that night’s episode of The Agenda.

KD: Just watching the first few minutes of your segment on child care. It’s not that “the system is broken,” it’s that there’s no system. That’s why things are as they are. In Quebec, where they understand child care as they do education, there’s a system. That was the approach we took in 2004 (when Dryden was with the federal Liberals as minister of social development and created a national child-care program). Child care is either a form of babysitting, or it’s about learning — and if it’s about learning, then it’s part of the education system and should get treated that way. Without this idea at the centre of the discussion, the words are all the same, the arguments are all the same and the conversation goes nowhere. I tend to email you after Agenda episodes that are good and useful; I don’t think this one was.

On December 2, 2020, Dryden responded to a column I wrote for TVO about the need for more women in politics.

KD: We need more women in politics because more women want to be in politics. We need more women in politics because politics needs more women. But more than that, we need more women in politics because what politicians bring to the job is their life experience, and the understanding and priorities that come from that. If there had been more women in politics earlier on, I doubt medicare would have taken until the 1950s.

On June 8, 2021, Dryden reminded me that he’d once been an excellent prospect for professional baseball. When I told him about an episode of Mad Men that I’d just watched, he replied with this.

KD: I have a “six degrees of separation” connection with (Mad Men star) Jon Hamm. When he was growing up in St. Louis, the Cardinals’ catcher at the time, Ted Simmons, was like his second father. At a tryout camp for the Baltimore Orioles in Pontiac, Michigan, when I was 18 and Simmons was 17, I got him to fly-out to centre field.

On May 16, 2022, Ken was watching an Ontario election debate that I co-moderated with the Star’s Althia Raj — and he wasn’t happy.

KD: I don’t know whether this debate is worse than previous ones, but it certainly is hard to listen to, and it doesn’t make the leaders look good. Would you ever do a show about what an effective, citizen-helpful debate might look like? And not one dominated by political insiders who think either that these debates aren’t bad or that there’s nothing to be done about them. Are there political debates in any country that work? I think your audience would appreciate such a program and find it interesting.

On August 8, 2022, I sent Ken an email wishing him a happy 75th birthday.

SP: I cannot quite comprehend that you’re 75. You are one of the people who is frozen in my mind in his twenties. But if I’m 62, then I guess it makes sense that you’re 75. Happy birthday to a guy who has led a meaningful, impactful life in multiple arenas, hockey and otherwise. I’m proud to say I know you. P.S. You’ve given me a happy reason to remember this date. Bill Davis (the former Ontario premier) died a year ago today. That’s a much less happy memory for me.

KD: Thanks, Steve. It’s very nice of you to notice. It kind of snuck up on me a bit. I think of milestones birthdays as the ones that end in zero, but I guess this qualifies. Like you, I want what I do next to be even more meaningful and useful. So here’s to you, too.

On October 8, 2022, I wrote Dryden a note of condolence after his older brother, Dave Dryden, who also played in the NHL, died. I made reference to the games in which Dave and Ken played against each other.

KD: Thank you, Steve. It was nerve-wracking for our parents and for us, but when it was over, it felt as it feels now: joyous. Dave was a very special person, and we’ll miss him a lot, but he remains deep inside the hearts of his kids and grandkids and others who knew him, and deep inside mine, too. We’re all grateful and feel very lucky to have known Dave.

On December 30, 2022, I wrote Dryden to tell him that I’d just visited the Hockey Hall of Fame with my 19-year-old daughter, who became so interested in the 1972 Summit Series that we went home and watched a miniseries about it.

SP: She loved it. We talked some more about it. She was still curious. Then I got a good idea. I turned on that interview we did on The Agenda about your new book, and she watched all of it without distraction. She loved your answer about the distinction between what each side (Canada and the Soviet Union) wanted and needed. It was such a memorable night with my daughter, and I love the fact that the Team Canada of 1972 is still bringing people together 50 years later. More evidence that your team and that series are the most impactful ever.

KD: I can only wish to get more emails like this. It’s beautiful. As you know, we all hope that what we do has some small impact on somebody, in some way. And we rarely do know, and if it does happen, it’s often in ways we’d never have imagined. For you and your daughter, it’s a shared moment that has to do with hockey, the Hall of Fame, and the ’72 series. Thank you for sharing that moment with me.