Nhl Player Quotes

And I will.

As I do a few laps around the ice, I picture it in my mind’s eye: playing for the Chicago Falcons. Not only are they one of the biggest junior league hockey teams in all of North America, their players are also a favorite of NHL scouts.

I smile. "Mr. Perfect Beautiful Hockey God?" "Oh, shut up. You know it's true," she replies in a flat tone. "You should be the face of the NHL. They should put you on billboards in Times Square. You're hot and your charm levels are through the roof.

Brooks wanted to abandon the traditional, linear, dump-and-chase style of hockey that had held sway in North America forever. He wanted to attack the vaunted Russians with their own game, skating with them and weaving with them, stride for high-flying stride. He wanted to play physical, un-yielding hockey to be sure, but he also wanted fast, skilled players who would flourish on the Olympic ice sheet (which is 15 feet wider than NHL rinks) and be able to move and keep possession of the puck and be in such phenomenal condition that they would be the fresher team at the end.

For the Blackhawks players, after years of being told “no,” of being told to shut up and keep your head down and be grateful you’re in the NHL at all, it was jarring to be told “yes” over and over and over again. It was motivating too. It was also kind of terrifying. That’s part of the genius of McDonough.

Just like an NHL sniper who shot hundreds of pucks every day as a boy or the NBA player who practiced free throws forever, I put the same effort into being an accomplished broadcaster. While I’m eternally appreciative of those who helped and influenced me, I had an unrelenting work ethic that led to any success I enjoyed. I’m not saying others didn’t work hard, but I never came across a broadcaster who outworked me. In other words, I was far from a natural.

Soon enough, MobilityWOD had morphed into our present company, The Ready State, and we were working on movement and mobility with all branches of the military; NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL players and coaches; Olympic athletes; university sports teams; Fortune 500 companies; individual CEO types; and thousands of others.

I loved 95% of the game. I miss that part of it every day. But the other 5%? That part has damaged me more than the 95% ever helped me.

One of the misconceptions in minor hockey is a belief that players have to get on “big city” teams as young as possible to gain exposure when being identified by major junior clubs. For example, the Greater Toronto Hockey League (GTHL) has long been considered a strong breeding ground, with three or four elite AAA teams each year producing some of the top players for the OHL draft. However, on the list of players from Ontario since 1975 who have made the NHL, only 16.8 percent of those players came from GTHL programs while the league itself represents approximately 20 percent of the registered players in the province—that means the league has a per capita development rate of about –3 percent. What the research found was that players from other Ontario minor hockey leagues who elevated to the NHL actually had an edge in terms of career advancement on their GTHL counterparts by the age of nineteen. Each year several small-town Ontario parents, some with players as young as age eight, believe it’s necessary to get their kids on a GTHL superclub such as the Marlboros, Red Wings, or Jr. Canadiens. However, just twenty-one GTHL “import” players since 1997 have played a game in the NHL in the last fifteen years. This pretty much indicates that regardless of where he plays his minor hockey from the ages of eight through sixteen, a player eventually develops no matter how strong his team is as a peewee or bantam. An excellent example comes from the Ontario players born in 1990, which featured a powerhouse team in the Markham Waxers of the OMHA’s Eastern AAA League. The Waxers captured the prestigious OHL Cup and lost a grand total of two games in eight years. In 2005–06, when they were in minor midget (age fifteen), they compiled a record of 64-1-2. The Waxers had three future NHL draft picks on their roster in Steven Stamkos (Tampa Bay), Michael Del Zotto (New York Rangers), and Cameron Gaunce (Colorado). One Waxers nemesis in the 1990 age group was the Toronto Jr. Canadiens of the GTHL. The Jr. Canadiens were also a perennial powerhouse team and battled the Waxers on a regular basis in major tournaments and provincial championships over a seven-year period. Like the Waxers, the Jr. Canadiens team also had three future NHL draft picks in Alex Pietrangelo (St. Louis), Josh Brittain (Anaheim), and Stefan Della Rovere (Washington). In the same 1990 age group, a “middle of the pack” team was the Halton Hills Hurricanes (based west of Toronto in Milton). This club played in the OMHA’s South Central AAA League and periodically competed with some of the top teams. Over a seven-year span, they were marginally over the .500 mark from novice to minor midget. That Halton Hills team produced two future NHL draft picks in Mat Clark (Anaheim) and Jeremy Price (Vancouver). Finally, the worst AAA team in the 1990 group every year was the Chatham-Kent Cyclones—a club that averaged about five wins a season playing in the Pavilion League in Southwestern Ontario. Incredibly, the lowly Cyclones also had two future NHL draft picks in T.J. Brodie (Calgary) and Jason Missiaen (Montreal). It’s a testament that regardless of where they play their minor hockey, talented players will develop at their own pace and eventually rise to the top. You don’t need to be on an 85-5-1 big-city superclub to develop or get noticed.

Sidney Crosby is the best player in the NHL

You see that ice out there?” he asks. “Yes,” I answer. “What color is it?” He doesn’t look at me. His eyes are glued to the rink. “White,” I tell him. “White,” he repeats. “If you let any of my players touch you, that ice will be painted red with their blood, and it’ll be your job to come up with a creative way to explain how a whole team of NHL players went missing,” he says before turning his icy glare on me.

When I was little, I figured I'd play in the NHL someday. It wasn't because I was the best player, but because I improved every single season. Some guys stayed the same or even got worse, so I imagined that I'd get better until I was the best. Stupid kid-thinking.

Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been. —WAYNE GRETZKY, NHL hockey player and Hall of Famer

Grayson Gunn pushed through the double doors to the Las Vegas Sinners locker room and was met by 23 stares including Nealy Windham’s, his new coach. She was the only female coach in the NHL and that might give some players pause.

Juniper Falls, Minnesota might be a small town, but we've produced 18 NHL players, 5 NCAA All-Americans and three Olympians, including a member of the 1980 Miracle on Ice team. Hockey is almost everyone's blood and NHL games are only for people like us; the Olympics are only once every four years. Juniper Falls High School Hockey is a town event. No, it's the town event which is why, outside of the team and our coach, we're all treated like royality.

Being a hockey coach and ex-NHL player, I have dealt with a lot of overgrown, testosterone-filled man children in my life. It takes some epic levels of assholism to piss me off.

The morning skate was a game-day ritual dating back to the seventies, introduced in North America by the Russians, and used as an attendance taking to make sure players who may have been out carousing the night before finished sweating the alcohol out of their system before the game.

The NHL theory of violence goes something like this: Hockey is by its nature a violent game. Played in an area confined by boards and unbreakable glass, by players carrying sticks travelling at speeds approaching thirty miles per hour, collisions occur, and because they occur, the rules specifically permit them, with only some exceptions. But whether legal or illegal, accidental or not, such collisions can cause violent feelings, and violent feelings with a stick in your hands are dangerous, potentially lethal feelings. It is crucial, therefore, that these feelings be vented quickly before anger and frustration explode into savage overreaction, channelled towards, if not desirable, at least more tolerable, directions. In essence, this is Freud’s “drive-discharge” theory of human aggression.

I don’t want to be anyone’s option anymore. I want someone to choose me.  Do you know who’s been trying to choose me for two weeks now? Brett’s favorite player in the NHL, that’s who. 

wanted to go to a Knicks game. Of course I did—I’d only ever been to one Knicks game in my life; tickets were both expensive and difficult to come by. After I said yes, I thought of the awkwardness of sitting there for a whole game with a boss almost four times my age. Maybe we could pass the time by talking about the game. Or ferrets. Before I could even finish worrying, Kenneth left me instructions on where to pick up my press pass. Whoa. Hold the rotary, wall-mounted phone. I was going as press? I was going as press. By myself. At seventeen, I was technically too young to get a credential. But Kenneth had been working with Madison Square Garden so long, that rule didn’t even matter. The Knicks’s media department assumed I was eighteen, and when I got to the Garden, there was a credential waiting for me with my correctly spelled name on it. It could have said Dave Hoffmeyer; I’d have been just as excited. If I thought the lobby of the NHL was impressive, you can imagine how I felt the first time I stepped into a professional locker room. I took copious notes during the game and stuck my recorder in the face of anyone who was talking. And, feeling bold, I even interviewed a few people who weren’t talking until I asked them to. While waiting for the players to finish showering and come out for interviews, I approached two celebrity fans. They were standing in the interview area, so I figured they were interested in being interviewed. The first fan was New York Jets wide receiver and number one–overall draft pick Keyshawn Johnson. Johnson flatly (and rudely) turned me down, even going as far as to call me kid. And not in the endearing way that Superman said it to Jimmy Olsen. Hurt but not broken, I walked over to Hanging with Mr. Cooper star Mark Curry, who couldn’t have been