from Ken Dryden at the Toronto Sun,

In this transcript of his speech to be given at the University Club of New York on Sept. 19, author and NHL legend Ken Dryden implores commissioner Gary Bettman to see what everyone else does: That more must be done to prevent brain injuries in hockey …

Almost two years ago to the day, Sept. 20, 2017, I was also here in New York — to have lunch with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.

I had with me a copy of my book, Game Change: The Life and Death of Steve Montador and the Future of Hockey. No one else had seen it except the publisher – it wouldn’t be in stores for a month. I wanted Gary Bettman to be the first to have a copy.

I’d known Gary for more than 20 years. We had both gone to Cornell — he arrived in Ithaca the year after I graduated. But we got to know each other a little after he was named the league’s commissioner in 1993, then a lot more after I became president of the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1997. We worked together on some tough questions: Fast-rising player salaries, the crash of the Canadian dollar, the fight with the players over a salary cap that would later shut down the league for an entire season.

I found Gary smart, quirky, combative — especially in a lawyerly way — relentless, always “on,” and always driven to know more than everyone else in the room. And also a little insecure — he was an American who had never played this Canadian game. And as football and basketball commissioners had delivered for their team owners a salary cap, he hadn’t for his.

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