Ken Dryden remembers his longtime friend and teammate Bob McGuinn

I was a teammate of his longer than I was of anyone else’s. Eleven years, from when I was 10 and he was 12, five years with Humber Valley, two with Etobicoke in junior B, four years in college hockey at Cornell University. In many ways, as it was with Bob McGuinn and lots of others, we never stopped being teammates.

He was a good player, never the best on any of the teams he was on, and a lot better than he looked. His upper body was noticeably long, his legs were noticeably not. He skated pitched forward. He seemed slower than he was. He looked dorky. If he was ever in a fight, it was never intended. If he ever won, it was because his opponent fainted at the sight of blood — Bob’s.

He was also the only player to win a U.S. NCAA college hockey championship, with Cornell in 1967, and a Canadian CIAU championship three years later, with the University of Toronto. The year after we had won our title with Cornell, and the U of T had won another of its own, in a showdown game in Buffalo which the players on both sides saw as the unofficial North American championship, with the score tied 0-0, he took the opening faceoff of overtime, and depending on whose version of the story you believe, streaked towards the U of T net and scored 2.4 seconds later. Or, after being warned by the referee several times for a delay of game penalty, 28 seconds later. He wasn’t fast, his shot was embarrassing, but he could score.

Many hockey players are really funny. Bob was the funniest guy on every team he was ever on. At the emotional centre of every team is its best player. Wherever Bob played, it was also Bob. In a dressing room before a practice or game, where’s the noise, where’s the laughter? Wherever Bob is. After a game, in a restaurant, as we got older in a bar, it was the same. He made teams want to be teams, love to be teams. He made being a team fun.

He was a team-maker all his life in everything he did. He was a senior executive of a multinational technology giant. Once my brother was on a flight from Vancouver to Toronto. He walked towards the back of the plane, he could hear banter and laughter as he approached the washrooms, looked up, and in the middle of it there was Bob. Not obnoxious, never obnoxious. Fun. He and his work buddies were returning from a sales conference.

He loved golf. Golf didn’t always love him. He was a lefty. He could hit good shots, and he could hit astonishingly, amazingly bad ones. His duck-hooks are legendary. His ball would scream off his tee like a rocket, then about a hundred yards later, scream abruptly 90 degrees to its right to who knows where. This seemed to surprise him. It never surprised us. A regular church-goer, he accepted the preachings of God on Sundays. On a golf course, he lectured the Lord back. To no apparent avail.

As kids, we played golf a few times each summer, then after university I pretty much stopped playing. Needing to entertain clients, or so he said, he was playing often. A mutual close friend called us to set up a game. About 25 years had passed since the last time we played. We were barely onto the third hole when I started to do the math. In all those years, playing about a hundred rounds a year, averaging about one hundred shots a round, he had hit about 250,000 shots. It was like time had stood still. He hit the same out-of-the-blue good shots, and the same hysterical, incomprehensible duck-hooks. And he still seemed surprised. And he still had the same conversations with God. But even more, it was the same total fun just being around him.

He made every foursome he was part of his team. And his putts were even more beyond belief than his duck-hooks. It’d be the 18th hole, after a summer of playdowns a club’s team championship would be on the line, Bob’s teammate watching excitedly, almost confidently, Bob, again depending on whose version of the story one believed, facing a diabolical triple-twisting, double up-and-down hill 30-footer, or an 18-inch tap in — leaving it just a little bit short.

Again, the clubhouse after and the clubhouse years after that, the banter, the laughter, it’s as if everyone was part of the team. It’s not always the putts you make, it’s also the ones you don’t.

Age and all those shots led to shoulder and foot injuries in recent years, and he played less often. Then something else happened. It probably started with COVID. None of us were getting out much, some hardly at all. Bob had been married twice, but he hadn’t been married for many years and he had no kids. We were all losing contact at a time when contact was mattering more and more.

Bob spent a lot of his days on his laptop, discovering whatever he discovered. Great cartoons, little video clips, the weirder and stupider the better. He’d send a few on to us. We’d send some of our own weird stuff back to him. His once-in-a-while emails became once a day, then a few times a day. His email list grew to 60 or 70 names.

Sometimes he’d send serious, contentious stuff. We had a lot in common, some things we really didn’t. Some stuff, of the kind that in recent years has brought some parents and kids, and some lifelong friends, not to talk to each other. It was really hard at times. Then it was easy. We like Bob too much. We like each other and matter to each other too much. We’re a team, Bob’s team, and we will not mess around with that.

Two weeks ago, Bob died. It was sudden. We were shocked, and we still are, our captain and best player, our emotional heart. What do we do now? What will we do about our monthly brunches, our afternoons at the track twice a year when Bob as one of our genius handicappers would always arrive with his pages and pages of notes that so brilliantly demonstrated the absolute impossibility of any picks other than ours winning. Which, of course, didn’t happen, but which somehow still sent us home, every time, as happy losers? What now?

I think we’ll be OK. We’ll talk a lot about Bob the first few times we meet up, I’m sure. Then we won’t. Not directly. We won’t have to. In all the banter, in all the laughter, in all the fun, he’ll just be there.

Special to National Post

Please join Bob’s family and friends at a ‘Celebration of Bob’s Life’ at the Canadiana Restaurant, 5230 Dundas Street West, Etobicoke, on Wednesday, May 14 from 1-4 p.m.

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.