For those of you who feel that the lockout's given the 40th anniversary of the Summit Series short shrift, Ken Dryden, writing for the Globe and Mail, recounts the time he spent in Russia remembering the late summer of 72:

The Summit Series is my favourite hockey memory. And I have too much of a stake in that memory to risk it on someone else’s version of the series, on seeing things again many years later with different eyes, and wondering if I got it right the first time. I’m not interested in wondering. I feel what I feel.

But this time I had to go. Many other players were going. I knew these ceremonies meant something to Russian fans, for whom the series is almost as special as it is for Canadians.

I had been to the old Soviet Union many times from 1969 to 1989, but I had never been to Russia. And mostly I went because 40 years is a long time, and you can never count on 50.

I didn’t know it, but what was ahead was a good old-time road trip.

Continued