quotations about hockey
What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick.
SARAH PALIN
speech at Republican National Convention, September 3, 2008
My other car is a Zamboni.
HOCKEY BUMPER STICKER
Some people skate to the puck. I skate to where the puck is going to be.
WAYNE GRETZKY
attributed, Bring Your "A" Game
Anyone now suggesting that the game of hockey is like the game of life will be required to eat a puck raw.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Esquire, 1976
In the forties, when I was playing, we were officially the most violent team in the country, and that means probably the whole world, and by the way, that's why I could skate with no toes. A figure skater, a speed skater, an NHL forward, sure, you need your toes for control, but all that finesse takes a backseat when all you're trying to do is slam somebody into a wall and break all his teeth.
DAN WELLS
Partials
Poets like to put hockey to music: they evoke "the swift hiss of skatesong" (Brian Richardson) and report that "the river sings of skinny" (Alix Vance). I don't know that those allow for the game's full percussion, though. Hockey likes to keep its words simple and onomatopoeic. That's why bash is a premium hockey verb, as are many of its several rhymes: crash, smash, trash, lash, thrash, slash, as well as (the important hockey compound noun) skin rash. Hockey is as taciturn as a Ray Carver story, its style flinty and plain-spoken. Or maybe I mean Hemingway, who liked to think that 90 percent of the story is iceberged under the surface. It's a practical matter, too: at the most basic literary level of the word, hockey is too fast, too slick, too kinetic. There's no time when you're skating to build a sentence. It's not that it can't be expressed, just that it doesn't need to be. The form in which hockey best expresses itself is hockey.
STEPHEN SMITH
Puckstruck
Some coaches and parents behave as if kids' hockey is the same as the competitive, elite game. It isn't and shouldn't be treated as such. When it comes to kids, it's clear--the best way to grow hockey tough players is first to grow their interest in the game, teach them skills and values, and remember first and foremost it is their game. It should be fun.
SAUL L. MILLER
Hockey Tough
You miss 100% of the shots you never take.
WAYNE GRETZKY
attributed, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Hooked on Hockey
Half the game is mental; the other half is being mental.
JIM MCKENNY
attributed, Bobby Orr and Me
When hell freezes over, I'll play hockey there too.
ANONYMOUS
It is a pretty special feeling to play against your brother on a frozen pond one day and in the NHL the next.
GORDIE HOWE
My Story
I went to a fight the other night, and a hockey game broke out.
RODNEY DANGERFIELD
Toronto Star, September 27, 1978
Hockey belongs to the Cartoon Network, where a person can be pancaked by an ACME anvil, then expanded--accordion-style--back to full stature, without any lasting side effect.
STEVE RUSHIN
attributed, Blood & Ice
Give blood. Play hockey.
ANONYMOUS
Hockey players wear numbers because you can't always identify the body with dental records.
ANONYMOUS
I love the smell of the ice ... and the cold. The sound the puck makes when it's sliding across the ice or when hits the net for a goal ... as long as it's our goal.
J. STERLING
In Dreams
That's just the way it works when you play against the same guys game after game. Hockey players remember everything. It's in the nature of the game that someone is going to get a stick up on you, or give you a little cross-check in the back as you look for position in the slot, or someone is going to chirp at you. Or maybe someone just beats you fair and square and you don't like it. No one likes to be beaten. You don't retaliate in the moment. You just remember the guy's number, and sort it out later, usually when the referee isn't nearby.
WAYNE GRETZKY
99: Stories of the Game
We were hockey gypsies, heading down another gravel road every weekend, plowing into the heart of that magnificent northern landscape. We never gave a thought to being deprived as we travelled, to being shut out of the regular league system. We never gave a thought to being Indian. Different. We only thought of the game and the brotherhood that bound us together off the ice, in the van, on the plank floors of reservation houses, in the truck stop diners where if we'd won we had a little to splurge on a burger and soup before we hit the road again. Small joys. All of them tied together, entwined to form an experience we would not have traded for any other. We were a league of nomads, mad for the game, mad for the road, mad for ice and snow, an Arctic wind on our faces and a frozen puck on the blade of our sticks.
RICHARD WAGAMESE
Indian Horse
All hockey players are bilingual. They know English and profanity.
GORDIE HOWE
attributed, Blood & Ice
He shoots! He scores!
FOSTER HEWITT
catchphrase first used during radio broadcast of hockey game, April 4, 1933