Great Hockey Quotes

A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.

Don’t you dare tell anyone about this,” she orders. “Why not? It’ll only boost your street cred.” “I don’t want to be another one of your puck bunnies, and I don’t want people thinking I am, understood?” Her use of the term makes me grin harder. I like that she’s picking up the hockey lingo. Maybe one of these days, I’ll even convince her to come to a game. I have a feeling Hannah would be a great heckler, which is always an advantage at home games. Though knowing her, she’d probably heckle us and give the other team the advantage.

You can't have 'ass' as a word." Tess declared. She picked up Farley's tiles and thrust them back into her hand."You're forgetting the rules. You're supposed to put down words that you know relate to Oliver.Like hockey. Or six pack." Farley pulled a face. "Unless you're commenting on the fact that he has a really great ass, in which case ewww, but okay.

Luc scored forty and slapped the darts in her palm. “The light sucks in here.” “No.” She smiles and took great pleasure in announcing, “You suck.” His gaze narrowed. Weeks of anger and hurt poured out of her and she said, louder than she’d intended, “And worse – you’re a whiner.” A collective intake of breath caught their attention and she and Luc turned and looked at the guys watching a few feet away. “Lucky’s gonna kill Sharky,” Sutter predicted from the sidelines. By taut agreement they both went to their respective corners. Jane shot and scored sixty-five. Luc scored thirty-four. “Now remind me. Why do they call you Lucky?” she asked as she reached for the darts. He pulled them back out of her reach as a slow, purely licentious smile curved his mouth. A smile that told her he was remembering her on her knees kissing his tattoo. “I’m sure if you think long and hard, you’ll remember the answer to that.” “No.” She shook her head. “Some things just aren’t that memorable.

On the first day of November last year, sacred to many religious calendars but especially the Celtic, I went for a walk among bare oaks and birch. Nothing much was going on. Scarlet sumac had passed and the bees were dead. The pond had slicked overnight into that shiny and deceptive glaze of delusion, first ice. It made me remember sakes and conjure a vision of myself skimming backward on one foot, the other extended; the arms become wings. Minnesota girls know that this is not a difficult maneuver if one's limber and practices even a little after school before the boys claim the rink for hockey. I think I can still do it - one thinks many foolish things when November's bright sun skips over the entrancing first freeze. A flock of sparrows reels through the air looking more like a flying net than seventy conscious birds, a black veil thrown on the wind. When one sparrow dodges, the whole net swerves, dips: one mind. Am I part of anything like that? Maybe not. The last few years of my life have been characterized by stripping away, one by one, loves and communities that sustain the soul. A young colleague, new to my English department, recently asked me who I hang around with at school. "Nobody," I had to say, feeling briefly ashamed. This solitude is one of the surprises of middle age, especially if one's youth has been rich in love and friendship and children. If you do your job right, children leave home; few communities can stand an individual's most pitiful, amateur truth telling. So the soul must stand in her own meager feathers and learn to fly - or simply take hopeful jumps into the wind. In the Christian calendar, November 1 is the Feast of All Saints, a day honoring not only those who are known and recognized as enlightened souls, but more especially the unknowns, saints who walk beside us unrecognized down the millennia. In Buddhism, we honor the bodhisattvas - saints - who refuse enlightenment and return willingly to the wheel of karma to help other beings. Similarly, in Judaism, anonymous holy men pray the world from its well-merited destruction. We never know who is walking beside us, who is our spiritual teacher. That one - who annoys you so - pretends for a day that he's the one, your personal Obi Wan Kenobi. The first of November is a splendid, subversive holiday. Imagine a hectic procession of revelers - the half-mad bag lady; a mumbling, scarred janitor whose ravaged face made the children turn away; the austere, unsmiling mother superior who seemed with great focus and clarity to do harm; a haunted music teacher, survivor of Auschwitz. I bring them before my mind's eye, these old firends of my soul, awakening to dance their day. Crazy saints; but who knows what was home in the heart? This is the feast of those who tried to take the path, so clumsily that no one knew or notice, the feast, indeed, of most of us. It's an ugly woods, I was saying to myself, padding along a trail where other walkers had broken ground before me. And then I found an extraordinary bouquet. Someone had bound an offering of dry seed pods, yew, lyme grass, red berries, and brown fern and laid it on the path: "nothing special," as Buddhists say, meaning "everything." Gathered to formality, each dry stalk proclaimed a slant, an attitude, infinite shades of neutral. All contemplative acts, silences, poems, honor the world this way. Brought together by the eye of love, a milkweed pod, a twig, allow us to see how things have been all along. A feast of being.

It's a great day for hockey.

A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be. —ATTRIBUTED TO WAYNE GRETZKY

Why are you so nervous?" Tate looked up to see Lucas giving him a dirty look. "This is easier that the regular season, we go out and have fun." "No, you get to have fun, I need t be super ninja goalie against every great forward in the league.

Jamie - “Shame the Bruins got punished by the Ducks last month.” I see the flash of arrogance return at lightning speed. Wes - “That was a fluke. And a terrible call in the third. Your wing tripped over his own duck feet.” Jamie - “With a little help from your D-man.” Wes - “Oh fuck that. Twenty bucks says the Ducks don’t make it past the first round this year.” Jamie - “Twenty is all you’re willing to bet? Sounds like you’re afraid. Twenty and a YouTube video proclaiming my greatness.” Wes - “ Done, but when you lose, you make that video in a Bruins T-shirt.” Jamie - “Sure.” I shrug. And just like that, the night gets easier.

Hockey great Wayne Gretzky said, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.

(Tracking two neuroscience researchers in conversation is much like following an intense hockey game. Take your eye off the puck for one second, and you’re lost.)

Costello, no great friend of Abbott, and no doubt jealous of Abbott’s decision to fight on and prosper instead of quitting after the 2007 defeat, would become a constant critic of Hockey.

For my number-one favorite kill, I almost went with Johnny Depp being eaten alive and then regurgitated by his own bed in A Nightmare on Elm Street, but the winner, by a finger blade’s width, has to be the death of that feisty Tina (Amanda Wyss), who put up such a fight while I thrashed her about on the ceiling of her bedroom. Freddy loves a worthy adversary, especially if it’s a nubile teenaged girl. A close second goes to my hearing-impaired victim Carlos (Ricky Dean Logan) in Nightmare 6. In these uber-politically-correct times, it’s refreshing to remember what an equal opportunity killer Freddy always was. Not only does he pump up the volume on the hearing aid from hell, but he also adds a nice Latino kid to his body count. Today they probably wouldn’t even let Freddy force-feed a fat kid junk food. Dream death number three is found in a sequence from Nightmare 3. Freddy plays puppet master with victim Phillip (Bradley Gregg), converting his arm and leg tendons into marionette strings, then cutting them in a Freddy meets Verigo moment. The kiss of death Profressor Freddy gives Sheila (Toy Newkirk) is great, but not as good as Al Pacino’s in The Godfather, so my fourth pick is Freddy turning Debbie (Brooke Theiss) into her worst nightmare, a cockroach, and crushing her in a Roach Motel. A classic Kafka/Krueger kill. For my final fave, you will have to check out Freddy vs. Jason playing at a Hell’s Octoplex near you. Here’s a hint: the hockey-puck guy and I double team a member of Destiny’s Child. Yummy! Now where’s that Beyonce…

Hockey is like the universe, Saul,” he said one day. “When you stand in the dark and look up at it, you see the placid fire of stars. But if we were right in the heart of it, we’d see chaos. Comets churning by. Meteorites. Star explosions. Things being born, things dying. Chaos, Saul. But that chaos is organized. It’s harnessed. It’s controlled. What you can’t see under all the action, the speed, the mayhem, is the great spirit of this game. That’s what makes you so extraordinary. You have that spirit within you.

I realize… she's hugging me. An affectionate, comfortable feeling envelops me. This is the hug I’ve waited for all my life. Right here, with this girl. A hug that makes up for a lifetime of not being held, not being loved, not being enough. This is the hug to end all hugs. But I definitely want more hugs in the future, and only from this woman. I’m not sure I’ll ever get enough hugs after this. I decide right in this moment, that if by some miracle I ever have children, I will hug them, and hug them often. What a simple, but life-changing gesture. Kissing is great… epic… amazing. But hugs are severely underrated.

You don’t understand what you’re signing yourself up for.” She nuzzles into my hand and lets out a sigh. “What if you can’t stand me when we’re done?” “Anastasia, me not liking you in eight weeks is not a concern you need to have. But just know, if I’m ever down a guy I’ll be expecting you to step up to play hockey. I think your hostility would be a great addition to the team.

So Peter rubs his stubble awkwardly and replies vaguely: “Oh, there were worse dads. Now I’ve got kids, it often feels like I’m not so damn great at it myself…” Teemu turns away and looks through the window, and perhaps he should have said what he was thinking: that he’s seen a lot of bad dads, and Peter isn’t one of them. Perhaps Peter should have said something to Teemu too, ask him how he’s feeling. But neither of them can figure out how to formulate their thoughts, so in the end they just talk about hockey instead.

A marriage is like a hockey season, darling, okay? Even the best team can’t be at their best in every game, but they’re good enough to win even when they play badly. A marriage is the same: you don’t measure it by the holiday where you drink wine before lunch and have great sex and your biggest problem is that the sand is too hot and the sun is shining too brightly on the screen when you want to play games on your phone. You measure it from everyday life, at home, at its lowest level, from how you talk to each other and solve problems.

Grief is embarrassing for most people. They want to think it has a set timetable, that one day, it will go away and you’re ready to live again. Everyone has been telling me that sex is a great first step. That it will open up the floodgates of emotion. That it will heal me.” She waited, her heart in stasis, knowing what would come next. Dreading it. “I don’t want to be healed, at least not in a way that makes me forget about them. I know that’s unhealthy, but I can’t help how I feel. Holding on to the pain keeps me connected to them.

Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities, and at this point, after examining the lives of Bill Joy and Bill Gates, pro hockey players and geniuses, and Joe Flom, the Janklows, and the Borgenichts, it shouldn't tbe hard to figure out where the perfect lawyer comes from. This person will have been born in a demographic trough, so as to have had the best of New York's public schools and the easiest time in the job market. He will be Jewish, of course, and so, locked out of the old-line downtown law firms on account of his "antecedents". This person's parents will have done meaningful work in the garment business, passing on to their children autonomy and complexity and the connection between effort and reward. A good school -- although it doesn't have to be a great school -- will have been attended. He need not have been the smartest in the class, only smart enough.

There is a tendency among regulators to act like Adam Smith’s “Man of System,” moving objects around on a chess board. The man of system … is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it.… He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it. If those two principles … are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably. (Smith, 1759; pp. 233-234) The “game” may be hockey or public policy; the insight is the same. Unintended consequences may reduce, or even eliminate, the good you expect to result from a policy change. People aren’t chess pieces.

I know you’ve had some bad luck recently, but there’s this guy, he plays for New York, they’re looking at trading him—” “Buck, I don’t want to date another hockey player.” I set down my controller so I can shovel more of the sundae into my mouth, uncaring of the suffering that will follow this frozen dairy heaven. “Not all of us are dogs, Violet. Randall’s a great guy.” “His name is Randall. How awesome can he be?” Buck mows down a group of people playing road hockey. “He goes by Randy.” “Even better. His name is another word for horny. Sounds perfect for me.” I’m not sure if I should laugh or cry. It’s not Randall’s fault his parents named him in relation to horniness. I can’t even entertain the idea of dating anyone else right now. Besides, I could never get serious with a hockey player again, or a dude named Randy. I’d make thrusting motions every time I said his name. It’d be awkward. “Wait a minute. Didn’t Alex get suspended for kicking the shit out of some guy named Randy?” I’m almost positive this is the case. “That was Randolph Cockburn. This is Randy Balls.” “Are you serious?” What’s with these guys with terrible last names? “Yeah, why?” Buck, my perverted stepbrother, doesn’t connect the outlandishly pornographic last name with the first name. “Randy Balls?” I burst out laughing. “You want to set me up with a guy named Randy Balls? Can you even imagine what would happen if we got married? My last name would be Balls. Violet Balls!” “Huh.” He makes a scrunchy face. “That wouldn’t be so good, would it? ’Specially if you hyphenated. Hall-Balls.” I continue to laugh until I start crying, which turns into hysterical, desperate sobs. I don’t want to end up as Violet Balls. I wanted to be Violet Waters—it sounds so romantic—and Alex ruined it all. My life sucks Randy’s balls.

De Villiers was shortlisted for the South African national hockey squad,’ the article says. True or false? False. In truth, I played hockey for one year at high school and was a member of the Afrikaanse Hoër Seunskool Under-16A team that beat our near neighbours and rivals at Pretoria Boys’ High for the first time, but I was never shortlisted for the national hockey squad, or ever came remotely close to that level. ‘De Villiers was shortlisted for the South African national football squad,’ the article says. True or false? False. I have never played any organised football (soccer). We used to kick a ball around during break at school and the game has become part of the Proteas’ warm-up routine. That is all. ‘De Villiers was the captain of South Africa junior rugby,’ the article says. True or false? False. I played rugby at primary school and high school, and enjoyed every minute, but I never represented South Africa at any level, either at SA Schools or SA Under-20, and was never captain. ‘De Villiers is still the holder of six national school swimming records,’ the article says. True or false? False. As far as I recall, I did set an Under-9 breaststroke record at Warmbaths Primary School but I have never held any national school swimming records, not even for a day. ‘De Villiers has the record fastest 100 metres time among South African junior sprinters,’ the article says. True or false? False. I did not sprint at all at school. Elsewhere on the Internet, to my embarrassment, there are articles in which the great sprinter Usain Bolt is asked which cricketer could beat him in a sprint and he replies ‘AB de Villiers’. Maybe, just maybe, I would beat him if I were riding a motorbike. ‘De Villiers was a member of the national junior Davis Cup tennis team,’ the article says. True or false? Almost true. As far as I know, there was no such entity as the national junior Davis Cup team, but I did play tennis as a youngster, loved the game and was occasionally ranked as the national No. 1 in my age group. ‘De Villiers was a national Under-19 badminton

SCENE 24 “Tiens, Ti Jean, donne ce plat la a Shammy,” my father is saying to me, turning from the open storage room door with a white tin pan. “Here, Ti Jean, give this pan to Shammy.” My father is standing with a peculiar French Canadian bowleggedness half up from a crouch with the pan outheld, waiting for me to take it, anxious till I do so, almost saying with his big frowning amazed face “Well my little son what are we doing in the penigillar, this strange abode, this house of life without roof be-hung on a Friday evening with a tin pan in my hand in the gloom and you in your raincoats—” “II commence a tombez de la neige” someone is shouting in the background, coming in from the door (“Snow’s startin to fall”)—my father and I stand in that immobile instant communicating telepathic thought-paralysis, suspended in the void together, understanding something that’s always already happened, wondering where we were now, joint reveries in a dumb stun in the cellar of men and smoke … as profound as Hell … as red as Hell.—I take the pan; behind him, the clutter and tragedy of old cellars and storage with its dank message of despair–mops, dolorous mops, clattering tear-stricken pails, fancy sprawfs to suck soap suds from a glass, garden drip cans–rakes leaning on meaty rock–and piles of paper and official Club equipments– It now occurs to me my father spent most of his time when I was 13 the winter of 1936, thinking about a hundred details to be done in the Club alone not to mention home and business shop–the energy of our fathers, they raised us to sit on nails– While I sat around all the time with my little diary, my Turf, my hockey games, Sunday afternoon tragic football games on the toy pooltable white chalkmarked … father and son on separate toys, the toys get less friendly when you grow up–my football games occupied me with the same seriousness of the angels–we had little time to talk to each other. In the fall of 1934 we took a grim voyage south in the rain to Rhode Island to see Time Supply win the Narragansett Special–with Old Daslin we was … a grim voyage, through exciting cities of great neons, Providence, the mist at the dim walls of great hotels, no Turkeys in the raw fog, no Roger Williams, just a trolley track gleaming in the gray rain– We drove, auguring solemnly over past performance charts, past deserted shell-like Ice Cream Dutchland Farms stands in the dank of rainy Nov.—bloop, it was the time on the road, black tar glisten-road of thirties, over foggy trees and distances, suddenly a crossroads, or just a side-in road, a house, or bam, a vista gray tearful mists over some half-in cornfield with distances of Rhode Island in the marshy ways across and the secret scent of oysters from the sea–but something dark and rog-like.— J had seen it before … Ah weary flesh, burdened with a light … that gray dark Inn on the Narragansett Road … this is the vision in my brain as I take the pan from my father and take it to Shammy, moving out of the way for LeNoire and Leo Martin to pass on the way to the office to see the book my father had (a health book with syphilitic backs)— SCENE 25 Someone ripped the pooltable cloth that night, tore it with a cue, I ran back and got my mother and she lay on it half-on-floor like a great poolshark about to take a shot under a hundred eyes only she’s got a thread in her mouth and’s sewing with the same sweet grave face you first saw in the window over my shoulder in that rain of a late Lowell afternoon. God bless the children of this picture, this bookmovie. I’m going on into the Shade.

SCENE 24 “Tiens, Ti Jean, donne ce plat la a Shammy,” my father is saying to me, turning from the open storage room door with a white tin pan. “Here, Ti Jean, give this pan to Shammy.” My father is standing with a peculiar French Canadian bowleggedness half up from a crouch with the pan outheld, waiting for me to take it, anxious till I do so, almost saying with his big frowning amazed face “Well my little son what are we doing in the penigillar, this strange abode, this house of life without roof be-hung on a Friday evening with a tin pan in my hand in the gloom and you in your raincoats—” “II commence a tombez de la neige” someone is shouting in the background, coming in from the door (“Snow’s startin to fall”)—my father and I stand in that immobile instant communicating telepathic thought-paralysis, suspended in the void together, understanding something that’s always already happened, wondering where we were now, joint reveries in a dumb stun in the cellar of men and smoke … as profound as Hell … as red as Hell.—I take the pan; behind him, the clutter and tragedy of old cellars and storage with its dank message of despair–mops, dolorous mops, clattering tear-stricken pails, fancy sprawfs to suck soap suds from a glass, garden drip cans–rakes leaning on meaty rock–and piles of paper and official Club equipments– It now occurs to me my father spent most of his time when I was 13 the winter of 1936, thinking about a hundred details to be done in the Club alone not to mention home and business shop–the energy of our fathers, they raised us to sit on nails– While I sat around all the time with my little diary, my Turf, my hockey games, Sunday afternoon tragic football games on the toy pooltable white chalkmarked … father and son on separate toys, the toys get less friendly when you grow up–my football games occupied me with the same seriousness of the angels–we had little time to talk to each other. In the fall of 1934 we took a grim voyage south in the rain to Rhode Island to see Time Supply win the Narragansett Special–with Old Daslin we was … a grim voyage, through exciting cities of great neons, Providence, the mist at the dim walls of great hotels, no Turkeys in the raw fog, no Roger Williams, just a trolley track gleaming in the gray rain– We drove, auguring solemnly over past performance charts, past deserted shell-like Ice Cream Dutchland Farms stands in the dank of rainy Nov.—bloop, it was the time on the road, black tar glisten-road of thirties, over foggy trees and distances, suddenly a crossroads, or just a side-in road, a house, or bam, a vista gray tearful mists over some half-in cornfield with distances of Rhode Island in the marshy ways across and the secret scent of oysters from the sea–but something dark and rog-like.— J had seen it before … Ah weary flesh, burdened with a light … that gray dark Inn on the Narragansett Road … this is the vision in my brain as I take the pan from my father and take it to Shammy, moving out of the way for LeNoire and Leo Martin to pass on the way to the office to see the book my father had (a health book with syphilitic backs)— SCENE 25 Someone ripped the pooltable cloth that night, tore it with a cue, I ran back and got my mother and she lay on it half-on-floor like a great poolshark about to take a shot under a hundred eyes only she’s got a thread in her mouth and’s sewing with the same sweet grave face you first saw in the window over my shoulder in that rain of a late Lowell afternoon. God bless the children of this picture, this bookmovie. I’m going on into the Shade.

Tampa was a city with a perpetual inferiority complex. For a while, the local flacks had called it America's Next Great City. Then somebody had stumbled over the comedy of that title. Tampa had the Bucs, and that was good. Tampa had hockey, the Lightning, but hockey was a B sport in the South and always would be. Tampa had great seafood, its own branch of Cosa Nostra, too many malls, the world's best airport, and lately, Ybor City.

Eddie and Jim both said it was a great thing the Russians were winning because the strongest team should win. Shannon thought the fascist philosophy was a very comfortable one. You simply cheered for the winner, who proved by virtue of winning that he should have won. No analysis, no doubts, no troubling moral questions.

When Barack Obama took office, the fossil fuel industry was not only eager to preserve its perks but also more militant in its opposition to climate change science than ever. Skocpol notes that 2007 had been a turning point in the fight. That year, Al Gore was awarded both a Nobel Peace Prize and featured in an Academy Award–winning documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth. The film featured Mann’s hockey stick graph. Gore’s acclaim and Mann’s simple chart helped raise concern about global warming to a new peak, with 41 percent of the American public saying it worried them “a great deal.

We have met the enemy and he is us. —POGO (COMIC-STRIP CHARACTER CREATED BY WALT KELLY

Indeed, professionalism in athletics was believed to be the source of all vice.

Montreal was the location of ice hockey’s first formal game (1875), its first published rules (1877), its first official club (1877), its first major tournament (1883), its first intercity league (1886) and its first national champion (1893).11 That occurred when the reigning governor general, Lord Frederick Stanley of Preston, presented his famous Cup, and a five-team league—three of which were from Montreal—settled on its winner.12 For much of this time, hockey as an organized sport had been marginal and largely unknown in Toronto.

Alisa Vitti gave me a great analogy for this. Imagine you have a hockey puck and a bicycle tire on a flat surface like a really big area of concrete. You give the hockey puck a push, and it goes for a while but eventually stops. You give the bicycle tire a push, and it keeps rolling for as long as it can stay upright and not run into an obstacle. In many cases, it actually gains speed as it goes. The hockey puck is flat, but the tire is a circle. The flat one stops. The circular one keeps going. This is the power of cyclical momentum. When we honor the distinct and uniquely useful phases of our bodies, the moon, and our creativity, we get further, faster, without having to push as hard. It’s like having spent your whole life furiously paddling against a really strong current and suddenly realizing that all you needed to do to cover more ground was turn your canoe downstream and use your paddle to steer every now and again.

The early participants also wore very modest equipment, making them look much lighter than today’s gladiators. Goalies relied on mere cricket pads to cover their shins. The protective gear of the others would be little more than thick padding to cover the more vulnerable parts of the body. Yet neither the players’ heads nor the goalkeepers’ faces were apparently considered vulnerable.

The executive refused to accept the Nelson resignation. Yet Cox was unrepentant, stressing the concept of rehabilitation: “We are dealing with boys playing games, and not with criminals.”13 Besides, he warned, accumulating exiles would only lead to a whole network of potentially professional players and teams in the province.

It was not uncommon for a quality performer to suit up with multiple teams in the same year, or to be employed in two different leagues at the same time. The phenomenon was reaching its logical extreme in Edmonton, where local management began buying star players from across the country as part of its plan to assemble a Cup contender. Another downside of unregulated competition was the inability of pro leagues to enforce on-ice discipline. It should be noted that, contrary to what the amateur organizers claimed, violence in hockey was by no means a professional phenomenon. The papers of the day are full of on-ice assaults, all-out brawls and spectator bedlam in the unpaid ranks. However, when amateur leagues dealt with these, they could enforce their rulings throughout the amateur world.

Your only “security” is knowing what you do well. Knowing your areas of competence will give you freedom amid corporate politics and unexpected layoffs. Wayne Gretzky was once asked why he was such a great hockey player. He responded with an eloquent morsel of wisdom: “I simply went to where the puck was going to be.” An average player would go where the puck was or is.

Be myself?” I ask skeptically. “That’s all the great Brian Brannon has to say to me?

In golf, all players play against each other. It is played by striking a ball with a club, trying to get it in a hole in the fewest number of strokes. A hole in one is the best score, when you hit the ball into the hole on the first stroke. While there have been many great players, Tiger Woods is the most known.

As Daniel Coyle points out in The Little Book of Talent, successful athletes don’t just fail during games. They go out of their way to seek out failure during practice. Hockey great Wayne Gretzky, for example, would often fall flat on the ice during skating exercises. It’s not that he’d forgotten how to skate. He was deliberately pushing his boundaries, experimenting with the limits of his ability. When practice is effortless, Coyle argues, learning stops. It’s by walking the precipice between your current abilities and the skills just beyond your reach that growth happens. Master performers don’t get to where they are by playing at the same level day after day. They do so by risking failure and using the feedback to master new skills.

A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be. —WAYNE GRETZKY

Nothing beats a major league mound, a ten-inch-high Kilimanjaro that few get to climb. Nobody in team sports commands a game like the pitcher. He dictates the pace and controls the tempo. A goalie in hockey or soccer can win a game with superior reaction. A pitcher prevents action. There is great power in that. Earlier

Her moan of despair came through the phone all too clearly. “Oh…Christ. Whatever. Kill yourself, fine.” She hung up on him. “Fuck.” He rubbed his face. “Fuck!” Rehv sat up and fired the cell phone at the bedroom door. And just as it ricocheted off the panels and went flying, he realized he’d busted the only thing he had with her number in it. With a roar and a messy scramble, he launched his body off the bed, quilts landing everywhere. Not a great move on his part. As his numb feet hit the throw rug, he went Frisbee, finding air briefly before landing on his face. On impact, a sound like a bomb had gone off rumbled through the floorboards, and he crawled for the phone, tracking the light that still glowed from its screen. Please, oh, fucking please, if there is a God… He was almost in range when the door swung open, narrowly missing his head and clipping the phone—which shot like a hockey puck in the opposite direction. As Rehv wheeled around and lunged for thing, he shouted at Trez. “Don’t shoot me!” Trez was in full fighting stance, gun up and pointed at the window, then the closet, then the bed. “What the fuck was that.” Rehv sprawled out flat to reach the phone, which was spinning under the bed. When he caught it, he closed his eyes and brought it close to his face. “Rehv?” “Please…” “What? Please…what?” He opened his eyes. The screen was flickering, and he pressed the buttons fast. Calls received…calls received…calls r— “Rehv, what the hell is going on?” There it was. The number. He stared at the seven digits after the area code as if they were the combination to his own safe, trying to get them all. The screen went dark and he let his head fall down on his arm. Trez crouched beside him. “You okay?” Rehv pushed himself out from under the bed and sat up, the room spinning like a merry-go-round. “Oh…fuck me.” Trez holstered his gun. “What happened?” “I dropped my phone.” -Ehlena, Rehv, & Trez

Shanahan and I were roommates for a while, and crosswords fit well into our relationship. When we weren’t doing that we spent a fair amount of our leisure time in some form of trivia contest, usually Jeopardy! or movie trivia. We got along great, other than the fact that Shanny always did his stretching routine in the buff.

Wayne Gretsky said, “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.

To the voters in 1960, the name Nikita Khrushchev carried great emotional significance. To these students, he sounded like just another hockey player.

The towns and the players are all different. But the game is always the same, its speed and power. Hockey’s grace and poetry make men beautiful. The thrill of it lifts people out of their seats.Dreams unfold right before your eyes, conjured by a stick and a puck on a hundred and eighty feet of ice. The players? The good ones? The great ones? They’re the ones who can harness that lightning. They’re the conjurers. They become one with the game and it lifts them up and out of their lives too.

I could see it now. Handing over a resume that said: great at handling his stick. While true, that would likely lead me to jobs as a male escort. Pass.

You did great,” Hannah declared. Forcing my eyes open, I glared at her, saying through gritted teeth, “You’re not my favorite person right now. Throwing a hand to her chest, she let out an exaggerated gasp. “You wound me. And here I thought we could invite you into our girl gang.

She can never be replaced, but this found family is pretty great. As you can probably tell, they’re already holding a spot open for you to join it.” A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. “Maybe. Gotta get through the trial run of a major holiday first.” “Be yourself. That’s more than enough.

Take a deep breath.” I couldn’t help but obey. “Good. Now, step in front of the mirror.” What was happening? Was this a scene from one of my books where a character was forced to watch their reflection as a partner got them off? Certainly not. Hannah was attached. At least, that’s what Braxton had said. Right? Blue eyes sparkling with mischief, she seemingly read my mind. “Relax. I’m batting for Team Loves a Giant Cock.” Good to know. “Look at yourself and tell me what you like about your body.” Oh, boy. Here goes nothing. “Um. I guess I have nice skin?” “Was that a question or a statement?” Hannah called over. “A statement. I have nice skin.” “Good. Continue.” “My breasts are a decent size. Not too big, not too small.” Hannah laughed. “You have great tits. Trust me. What else?” “I like my hourglass figure. Hips aren’t always a bad thing.” I was gaining confidence with each declaration. “You’ve got that right. Men go fucking nuts for hips to grab on to.

Great, so I’m not just messing around with one girl but four?” Braxton snorted. “Try seven. You’re forgetting about Benji’s partner and Natalie’s sisters-in-law. Good luck to you, man, because you’re gonna need it.

If you’re hiding a secret love child, now would be a great time to come clean. I’m about to have unrestricted access to your phone.

Great move, Maddox. A loss of self-control just cost you getting laid for the first time in months.

Anastasia, me not liking you in eight weeks is not a concern you need to have. But just know, if I’m ever down a guy I’ll be expecting you to step up to play hockey. I think your hostility would be a great addition to the team.

Oh no. Did the nasty man who chases men for a ball insult you? A man who also chases men for a ball, but on ice?” “I know you’re just trying to mock me right now, but let me say, you’re really fucking cute when you pout at me like that. But I’m going to need you to confirm for me that you know there isn’t a ball in hockey. I mean, I’m the goalie, so I don’t technically chase anyone, but if we could start with the ball thing first, that’d be great.

The superhot, kind of awkward, great at sex, full-set-of-bedding-using, Division One hockey player reading in bed after getting laid.

I could not say any of the things I wanted to say. I said you were a great hockey player. A nice guy. Very competitive. All of the shit that any of your teammates could have said.” Ilya sighed loudly, then continued in a quieter tone. “When you watch it, this is what you will see. Me saying nothing. I wanted to say you were fucking everything to me. Everything, okay?

UTIs are a real bitch. I’m sure the bunnies you’ve been with like to pretend that’s not a reality. Or maybe, they wear it as a badge of honor—a little memento of the time they fucked the Cal Berg. I hate to break it to you, but there isn’t an orgasm great enough to risk the burning sensation when I pee for the next three days.

As Peggy Fleming, the former Olympic champion figure skater, said, the most important thing is to love your sport. Never compete just to please someone else. “You’ve got to love what you’re doing,” hockey great Gordie Howe said. “If you love it, you can overcome any handicap or the soreness or all the aches and pains.

He felt settled in a way he hadn’t since moving to Austin. He had Liam, and somewhere to play hockey on weekends. Work was great too. And Aarti? Aarti was right here. It was almost surreal.

I’m really sorry that my need for an emotional connection and lack of sex was inconvenient for you. But guess what? It’s not so great for me either.

I know you’re just trying to mock me right now, but let me say, you’re really fucking cute when you pout at me like that. But I’m going to need you to confirm for me that you know that there isn’t a ball in hockey. I mean, I’m the goalie, so I don’t technically chase anyone, but if we could start with the ball thing first that’d be great.

We also had a brief glimpse of the main switch room, though I’m afraid it didn’t mean a great deal to us. There were acres of dials and colored lights, with men sitting here and there looking at screens and turning knobs. Soft voices, in every language, came through the loudspeakers. As we went from one operator to another we saw football games, string quartets, air races, ice hockey, art displays, puppet shows, grand opera—a cross section of the world’s entertainment, all depending on these three tiny metal rafts, twenty-two thousand miles up in the sky. As I looked at some of the programs that were going out, I wondered if it was really worth it.

The Red Wings had missed the playoffs that year, so he’d picked up a gig as a television commentator for the postseason. On an off day, he wound up watching a bridge game between some of the players. Our dad was an avid bridge player and a real student of the game. At one point, Dick Duff, who played left wing for the Canadiens, took a trick by finessing a mediocre trump card past the other players. Appreciating the move, Dad mumbled, “Great play” under his breath. One of Montreal’s defensemen, J.C. Tremblay, overheard him and snapped, “What would a dummy like you know about it?” That didn’t sit well with Dad. He told J.C. to remember what he’d said and walked away. Six months later, the Red Wings were in Montreal to play the Canadiens. As it happened, it was the night that Dad scored his 600th goal. The fans had barely finished giving him a standing ovation for the achievement, when they reversed course and started to rain down boos. A few minutes after his big goal, Dad trailed J.C. into the corner after a puck. When he came out of the corner, he left J.C. on the ice with a fractured cheekbone. The Forum crowd didn’t know why it had happened, but Dick Duff did. He skated past Gordie and said, “Card game.” Dad just nodded.

I stared at him, trying to see what a stranger would see. He did have great hair; it was thick and dark brown and fell slightly over his forehead. But his eyes were the nicest part of him, they were this neat hazel color and they crinkled up when he joked around. He had a nice smile, but I could still remember when he wore braces. Body-wise, I already knew he was built because I went to the gym with him and he could bench 250. But usually when I looked at his body, I was more envious of his upper body strength than thinking anything, well, sexual.

Lots of half-Asian girls are cute, but Kelly was all bright and energenic. When she talked, her whole face lit up. But now when she was completely relaxed, she looked beautiful. Her face was kind of heart-shaped with tanned skin, a few freckles, long eyelashes and really full lips. And her body was hot too. Kelly was strong; she went to the gym a lot, so she had great definition in her arms and legs. But she also had a tiny waist and this incredible ass.

Trash talking wasn't really personal. Guys just glommed onto whatever was easiest, like the fact that I was half-Asian or a girl. Now that I was 15, I took a lot more grief because most girls had switched to girls' hockey. I wasn't switching. I had played on the same hockey team since I moved to North Vancovuer, and I liked my coach and my teammates. Why mess with something great?

The Great One” Wayne Gretzky.

Only two months had passed since I had been traded to play defense for the Red Deer Rebels. In that time, I had learned to expect great hockey moves from Jason. I had watched him stickhandle while sliding on his knees. I had admired the way he hip-checked guys from out of nowhere. And I had been dazzled once to see him score with two guys wrapped around his shoulders. In my 25 games since joining this team in January, I had learned to expect nearly anything from #33.

A lot of people would jump at the chance to be seen with me, y'know." Her expression was pitying. "Poor Superglutes, aren't you getting enough attention from your millions of Instagram followers? Is it lonely being adored by all your fans?" "Very! All they see is this amazing body and gorgeous hair and beautiful cheekbones. Sure, I'm hilarious and great in bed, but do they appreciate it? Do you appreciate it?

is well known that increases in computer power and speed have been exponential. But exponential growth sneaks up on you in a way that isn’t intuitive. Start with a penny and double your money every day, and in thirty-nine days you’ll have over two billion dollars. But the first day your wealth only increases by a single penny, an amount that’s beneath notice. On the thirty-ninth day, however, your wealth will increase from one billion to two billion dollars—now that is a change impossible to miss. So like a hockey stick, the graph of exponential growth barely rises from the ground for some time, but when it reaches the beginning of the handle, watch out, because you suddenly get an explosive rise that is nearly vertical. It’s becoming crystal clear that we are entering the hockey-stick phase of progress with computers and other technologies. Yes, progress in artificial intelligence has been discouraging. But if we don’t self-destruct, does anyone imagine that we won’t develop computers within a few hundred years that will make the most advanced supercomputers of today seem like a toddler counting on his or her fingers? Does anyone doubt that at some point a computer could get so powerful it could direct its own future evolution? And given the speed at which such evolution would occur, does anyone doubt that a computer could become self-aware within the next few centuries? Visionaries like Ray Kurzweil believe this will happen well within this century, but even the most conservative among us must admit the likelihood that by the time the USS Enterprise pulls out of space dock, either our computers will have evolved into gods and obsoleted us, or, more likely, we will have merged with our technology to reach almost god-like heights of intelligence ourselves. And while this bodes well for these far-future beings, it isn’t so great for today’s science fiction writers.

Five minutes before practice is scheduled to end, Coach Giles blows his whistle and motions for us to join him at the bench. His typically stoic face crinkles into something like a smile. “Great news,” he says. “Just got a text from the activities office. Halcyon Lake has been selected as one of this year’s HockeyFest cities.” Carter whoops and Justin lifts me off my skates and spins me around as the guys talk over one another in their excitement. “Holy crap,” Showbiz Schroeder says. “Ho.Ly. Crap.” This is the closet Showbiz comes to swearing (admirable, considering the potty mouths on our team), further evidence that this announcement is a big deal.

I spend hours at hockey games every week working as the assistant trainer. (Appa said it would great on my resume for med school. I don’t think he realized I’d spend most of my time bandaging up sexy shirtless boys, but I’m not complaining).

Daniel isn’t some white knight who’s going to sweep me off my feet. He’s too busy spending every weekend with whatever floozy decides to blink her fake eyelashes at him. Sure, Daniel’s great at committment. He commits to the Falcons every game. He commits to cooking his mom dinner every night she works late. He just doesn’t commit when it comes to girls.

Hockey has too many rules if you ask me. If I didn’t love the game so much, I wouldn’t be here. They make you remember everything. Equipment, penalties, strategies, you name it. But I guess that’s partly why it’s so much fun; it’s not easy, you know? So you feel awesome when you do really great.

If Boston College didn’t offer them both a commitment though, T.J. would rather go where they could play together. They had great chemistry as linemates with every rush up the ice. Brad was fast, strong on the boards, won battles in the corners and possessed solid forechecking skills. He had that magical ability to score and create plays for his teammates, making him the type of winger that coaches sought. Their friends called it twin telepathy the way they killed penalties together and always knew where the other would be.

Jason was still on the blue eye, grabbing at the nylon belt that held up his hockey pants. Great. Two guys around us and swooping down on our goalie, and Jason is still undressing.

If you want to be a great New York lawyer, it is an advantage to be an outsider, and it is an advantage to have parents who did meaningful work, and, better still, it is an advantage to have been born in the early 1930s. But if you have all three advantages -- on top of a good dose of ingenuity and drive -- then that's an unstoppable combination. That's like being a hockey player born on January 1.

Jack was confident that this year would be different. His sister was a goalie. He was a center. They both could be great players in their own way, and he intended to prove it.

Every night at dinner, one kid had to bring a new vocabulary word to the table. We had to say it, spell it, define it and use it in a sentence. As a result, we all have great vocabularies.

As a person, Teemu is the anti–Chris Pronger. He’s never in a bad mood. He brings his enthusiasm and positive energy to any room he enters, which has great value in hockey, because this is a business filled with grumpy people. It’s like sunshine fills the room when Teemu arrives. He was a great player, but he was also a great teammate.

In terms of the way his teams play, he was the perfect match for me. He loves black-and-blue hockey. You never had to tell Randy to play the game tougher because that’s how his teams always played. He liked it as crude as I did. My three pillars were Randy’s three pillars. We were going to entertain you. We were going to gamble. We might give up more chances than other teams, but we’d be exciting. We could dazzle you with the puck and we could run you out of the building and onto the street. We were going to be tough as nails. We weren’t going to take any shit from anyone. And we were going to have great goaltending—and with Jiggy in net, we were already set there.

I don't want to jump on Smuttley's be true to your school wagon, but I try to kiss his ass occasionally because he's great for getting me out of tardies and getting retakes on Spanish quizzes that I've bombed. All in the name of Otter hockey, of course.

For my son, and all the Canadian youngsters like him, minor hockey is a great experience—as long as we adults don't ruin it for them. But, to do that, it will be a constant battle to keep a watchful eye on what happens in our rinks—on the ice, in the stands and in the dressing rooms. The onus is on all of us to make Canadian minor hockey a safer and saner environment for future generations of little pucksters.

By June, if you’re a Leafs fan, the season is over. Truthfully it is usually over by December. Every year, the Leafs have a great team on paper, but, unfortunately hockey is played on ice.