We had almost like our own little sports complex at the house. The driveway was like the pitching mound. We used to play one-on-one street hockey right there. My dad wanted to make sure we were ready to have some fun, so he was always out grabbing sports equipment.
I really love my family and kid, but first of all, it’s my hockey, my career. My family is second, and my fans go third. Sometimes my fans go second, and my family is third. It’s turning all the time.
A lot of my friends growing up were hunters, but I spent all my time on the ice hurting actual humans playing hockey. I never had the chance to run through the woods and shoot at a moose or deer. I was shooting pucks at goaltender’s heads.
People know me from a hockey game, from an earthquake, from the O.J case.
I’m awful at hockey.
My parents, they don’t say to me you have to play hockey. They just see me and how I love what’s going on on the ice, how I love this atmosphere.
Well, I come from a poor family. My father is a farmer. When I started playing, I wasn’t privileged enough to afford hockey pads and a kit, that was out of my reach.
I was a rugby player, I was a hockey player. You know, I just love to challenge myself, and I love to compete.
I love hockey, and I go to a lot of the games.
Obviously, being a hockey fan, I always bought all of the hockey games, so that makes this ‘NHL 2K7’ cover even more special to me.
For me, baseball is more comparable to chess than it is to hockey.
I know that meeting a black woman with a love for hockey is a bit like stumbling upon a unicorn in the woods… or a unicorn anywhere. I’m sure it’d be just as surreal finding a unicorn in downtown Chicago. But here I am.
I was not the best student. Thank God I had a lot of hockey talent.
I grew up with all hockey players.
Even in Canada, I never even played ice hockey. I never skated in my life; I always did rollerblade street hockey.
Recently, my dad has been teaching me a lot – like how to read a script. It used to just be about hockey or baseball or sports of whatever. We don’t have glitzy or glamour-y Hollywood-type talk, like, ‘Isn’t that person great?’ It’s more about the process of how it works.
I was playing a relatively high level of hockey, and I thought that’s what I wanted to do. But I had my first movie audition, and I was hooked.
I belong to an improv group, I play cello, I have these phases – fencing, tae kwon do, baseball, ice hockey, boogie boarding in the summer, snowboarding in the winter.
Growing up in Canada, I dated a few ice hockey players.
It’s not a sport you get famous at. If I wanted to be famous, I would have stuck with hockey.
When I was a kid, and the Hockey Night in Canada theme issued from our black-and-white Sylvania TV, I disappeared to the basement to listen to 45s and read the encyclopedias that my parents kept buying from travelling salesmen.
I somewhere along the way became fascinated with exploring characters who are willing to put themselves into violent situations, whether it’s football, hockey, boxing, being a cop, being a soldier. There’s not a lot of people who are willing to put themselves into those situations.
Hopefully when I make it to 80, I can go to a hockey game and watch the Predators and Capitals play with my grandkids. That’s probably my legacy on the hockey side.
I remember when I was young, I used to love hockey – I was selected to play for my county – and my dad said: ‘Well, there’s no money to be made in hockey,’ and it put me off for ever.
Before I broke my back, I was really looking forward to playing hockey at the University of Michigan. That was my biggest goal.
We’re a huge hockey family. I took to it really quickly, and I was in love with it.
That’s the fun part about your playing career is that everyone knows your first and foremost responsibility, and that’s playing hockey, but whenever you can mix in some other things have fun with it, that’s great, too.
My back has been compressed and operated on, my feet have been surgically cut up, and I have a knee that’s just going wacky. So I do my own driving, and I ski and skate. I’m playing hockey again. Anything that immobilizes my feet I’m OK with.
I had a hard time with that hockey. I hadn’t grown up skating, so that was my biggest challenge. We worked on it and worked on it. But then when we first shot it, it was so hard for me.
My family members were always there and I was very fortunate for that I mean, I played hockey growing up. That was the sport everyone in Charlestown played back then, and I had skates and the equipment, but I was growing so fast, it became hard to afford new stuff every year. But hockey was it for me.
We have always been taught that hockey is our national game, but it is only in general knowledge books and not on official papers.
I had more friends on my hockey team than I did on my soccer team. I might have been better at soccer, to be honest. But I think it was more the friendship, and my family was more of a hockey family than a soccer family, so when I had to make a decision, I tried hockey, and it turned out to be a good decision.
I got into a car accident and couldn’t play baseball, hockey, and basketball. We stuck with golf for a little while, and it’s panned out. I think it was a blessing in disguise.
I think it’s fairly clear that playing hockey isn’t the same as playing football.
For the next approximately three years, I have got Nathan to take care of. I know that once he graduates from high school, he will be off doing whatever it is he is going to be doing – probably playing ice hockey.
As a kid growing up in Montreal, I wanted to become either a hockey player or a wrestler. Since my family didn’t have a lot of money, my parents never put me in a hockey league because it was so expensive.
I’m just really passionate about the game of hockey. It’s all I know and I love it.
The Himalayan glaciers, China’s trade surplus, Olympic ice hockey – the world is full of pressing subjects that people never consult me about.
In a way, by being fully committed to the Olympic movement globally, I’m better able to promote women’s hockey and talk about women’s hockey and put a face to women’s hockey, to all the IOC members.
I grew up playing hockey and baseball, so I wish I had time to get back into it, but living in L.A. and North Carolina, you have to take advantage of the golf.
I love those hockey moms. You know what they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is? Lipstick.
We had a whole bunch of perks after the Olympic games like having dinner with the Queen of England and being hosted by the Prince of Monaco. We got to drop pucks at hockey games. We got to go on quite a tour.
A lot of guys are missing teeth and don’t get them fixed until they’re done. I think that’s pretty much the hockey trademark… guys figure, well, we’re going to lose our teeth anyway, so we’ll get them fixed when we’re done.
I’ve always loved sports and hockey is a sport I play as much as I can. I love it. In a weird way it’s like church and therapy and exercise all rolled up into one. I mean when I play hockey I don’t think about anything.
For me, it’s not a struggle to go out and play hockey. Under pressure, I feel it to a certain extent… but, I’m not scared of it.
4chan’s culture is unique and spreads and draws people in like no other. It’s also important to realize that 4chan wasn’t some overnight success, and there was never ‘hockey stick’ – like growth.
I’m not a hockey fan, which is probably why I had to leave Canada in the first place.
I would say it is important to have a good education, as hockey is a career that does not last many years, and you need to be prepared for this.
I happened to be in a position in Superior where I could play three sports, and when I came to Minnesota, I had the understanding they would allow me to play three sports. Kids now don’t have the same amount of time. You have coaches that think baseball is 10 months a year. Hockey is 11 or 12 months a year.
My father used to play ice hockey, though not at a high level, and my mother wasn’t involved in sport at all, but they were keen that we played some sort of sport. They chose tennis because they thought it was a good sport for girls to play.
Sometimes it just feels like the only thing you do is play hockey and eat.
I think now what you’re seeing is guys that are in the peaks of their careers anywhere from 27 to 35 years old, seems to be when they play their best hockey.
After my grandmother finished watching ‘Lawrence Welk,’ my dad would race to the TV and put on the weekly hockey game. He loved watching Henri Richard, Gordie Howe and Terry Sawchuk. My dad’s seven brothers and sisters weren’t particularly thrilled with his viewing choices.
Being in hockey shape is totally different than any other kind of fitness. You can run and bike and work out all summer and then go on the ice for one shift and you’re dead.
When I was growing up, I played a lot of different sports. There was a time when I was playing field hockey, tennis, and soccer at the same time. I was actually quite good at all of those sports.
Hockey wasn’t invented but discovered. The game, and the large organizing idea behind Stephen Smith’s deeply personal ‘Puckstruck,’ sleeps in ponds and in the crooked limbs of trees overhead; we merely pluck a stick from the sky and skate over the frozen world to find ourselves and each other.
