"This is the time of year when we have parents of 8- and 9-year-olds taking their young hockey players from their local town programs to out-of-town "elite" hockey tryouts and programs, programs that are more expensive and require more travel. This switch is done despite a parent's failure to implement an understanding of children and parenting: Prepubescent athletic achievement is, 99.9 percent of the time, completely irrelevant to postpubescent athletic achievement. It's too much, too soon for children and comes at a needless and unnecessary cost to the parent. It's usually a lose-lose situation that plays with the fragile brains of children." - John Buccigross, ESPN


"...non-hockey fans should comprehend and appreciate how difficult and unique hockey is to play. That level of athleticism weeds out the weak ones. I don't think hockey is a mainstream sport, and it may never be. So let's accept it and enjoy it. If hockey were such an easy sport, they would call it basketball, baseball or football." - Staff Sgt Ouimet, USAF, Middle East


”People talk about skating, puck handling and shooting, but the whole sport is angles and caroms, forgetting the straight direction the puck is going, calculating where it will be directed, factoring in all the interruptions. Basically, my whole game is angles.” - Wayne Gretzky


ESPN's John Buccigross quoting an excerpt from Jack Falla's "Home Ice":

"The most consequential backyard rink ever built was the one Walter Gretzky constructed on a slightly concave stretch of lawn behind the family home at 42 Varardi Street in Brantford, Ontario. … Walter also must have known that the best way to learn to play hockey is not only to be skating wind sprints and three-on-twos at the local rink, but to supplement team practices with time alone: time spent skating, stick-handling, and -- through a mysterious osmosis that seems to occur in some but not others -- internalizing the feel of puck, stick, blades and ice into an instinctive comprehension of the game, an assimilation surpassing our, or even his, understanding."