Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You learn from your mistakes and you learn from your failures. It's how you get up that defines you to a certain extent.
You go through playoff series and people forget about them. Nobody forgets about a Rangers-Devils series. It's demanding.
Yes, there's Montreal, but my real home, where my kids were born, where I became a citizen of this country, is New Jersey.
Growing up in Quebec, we were always playing sports. Your first athletic competition was against the kids living on your block.
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.
It's a dream come true to be part of an NHL team, to be a regular in the NHL, to live the life, to make the money and do all that stuff.
Every Christmas we went to my parents' cottage. My big brother would bring his buddies around, and we would play hockey games in the driveway.
I'm a guy that wanted to have fun. When I look back at all the wins I had, I must have had a lot of fun playing the game and made people happy.
I couldn't care less lots of times about getting scored on late in a game because it would affect my goals-against average or my save percentage.
You're paid to perform. There is an outcome to a game and it doesn't matter how many goals you score. If you don't win, you don't have a good time.
I think I was just really comfortable in my goalie equipment, just being in the net and being by myself for 60 minutes and talking to myself sometimes.
Goalies often react quickly to shots with no regard for what might happen to their body because we are trained to stop pucks first and ask questions later.
You act in different ways for your own personal well-being, and you don't think about the people you hurt along the way. wish I would have thought about it.
It's a big step to be drafted. Ultimately, it's everybody's dream. That's where you start thinking about making the team, maybe about winning the Stanley Cup.
Growing up, I'd never play goalie in street hockey or at shinny. I liked playing out. So the entire time I played goal, I liked handling the puck better than most.
It's a lot of hard work to be a manager or a coach. But as players, we had to have a good work ethic to be good, and we can use that trait in management or as a coach.
I know there is a lot of pressure on a goalie, a lot of responsibilities, but if you add on to yourself more than you need to, it makes it harder to deal with the adversity.
When you play hockey, you don't realize how much it takes to put a team together and the business people around the team, what they do to get the franchise to the next level.
My dad would talk to players like Claude Lemieux and Stephane Richer and tell them one day his son was going to play in the NHL. How many dads say the same thing? But, gee, he was right.
When you play hockey, it's a team game, and when I win, everyone around me is happy. I was able to make my teammates, the organization, my fans, happy 691 times during the regular season.
You compare a goalie position to a quarterback to a pitcher. You're going to make that decision of what's gonna happen to you. They're a high-pressure position. They're fun just for that.
Well, as a player you try to learn how to win, and when you get exposed to success there's also disappointment that comes along the way. So it becomes about how you deal with the ups and downs.
I think the NHL has done a great job of building the sport as far as getting the people's attention and letting them know what's going on in hockey - especially when the powers meet each other.
Every time I have a chance I'm going to make a pass to one of my players in practice. Every time I have a chance I'm going to clear the puck just to see how far I'm going to be able to shoot it.
In New Jersey, we won in '95, but after that for four years we never had a sniff at it. The next thing you know we went on a run of three Stanley Cup Finals in four years in 2000, 2001 and 2003.
You can't be happy, taking away something I've worked on all my life to do and help my teammates and help my defense, ... It's just part of me, playing the puck. So, definitely, you can't be happy.
My durability is just something I took a lot of pride in, that I was able to play 70 games over and over and over and they add up to 1,200-and-something games, plus the playoff games, plus whatever.
When you're a kid you always played to win a Stanley Cup in the streets or on the outdoor rinks, and when you do it for real, it's a pretty cool moment, it's something that I'm always going to remember.
Before I played in the NHL I had two surgeries. Definitely I was like, 'Wow, this is not good. I haven't played a game yet and I have two surgeries.' I didn't get another one ever again. I was fortunate.
I think if you want to be a successful president or a manager of a team, you need to understand what the business is all about because you have to deal with the business side of the game to be able to do what you need to do.
After his hockey days, my dad became a photographer, and a really good one, at that. He used to shoot the Expos and Canadiens, and he'd give me five bucks to haul around his equipment during games. He never had to ask me twice to do it.
When kids want a picture or autograph, you reflect later on and realize you did something good. Then you see them come back five years later, they're all grown up, have their own lives and they tell you how much you inspired them. You're like, 'Whoa.'
I think we've been through a lot this season and it will be nice to move on. It's one step at a time though. The focus of our hockey club was great. We really stuck to our game plan and didn't get too high or too low and we definitely didn't get over excited.
It's kind of funny the way it happened - the way I became a goalie. I was playing forward on this one team when I was little, and there was another team that needed a backup goalie. I mean, to me it just meant a chance to play more hockey, so I was all for it.
On the personal level, it's hard for a goalie. You don't get awards for save percentage or anything like that. Your work is really put into how many wins you can get, how many times you can get your team in the playoffs and all that. So I took a lot of pride in winning.
When I got the call of being drafted by the Devils, I was in shock more than anything. I didn't have a clue where New Jersey was, but it was just nice to be taken in the first round and nice to know where my future would be, which organization I was going to be a part of.
Our job is to get on the road and win one game now. It's a great position to be in. We were lucky to get home ice [advantage] this year. For some reason, we pulled it off at the end and we took advantage early in the series. Now, it's up to us to do our thing on the road.
My life was going to school, having a snack and going outside to play hockey until dinner time. I would then do my homework and go back out to play, but only if the Canadiens weren't playing that night. That's what I did every day, whether it was street hockey or pond hockey.
I watch a lot of tapes, a lot of games, all the replays. You watch the highlights on TV, those are all about goals getting scored or big saves. So you just look and see what guys do and how they're successful, and sometimes I see something and I go, Wow, that could work for me.
I think my mom is the person that holds the family together. For birthdays, for the holidays or whatever, everything has to go through my mom. She's the one reminding us about everything that's going on in the family, she's in touch with everybody while we're on our own doing our things.
The doctor looked at it after the game and he thought it didn't look too bad, but we'll see what happens. My skate got caught and I twisted it. I heard it twist and I couldn't get up. All my body weight fell on it. I had to be really hurt to leave the game - we were still in the game at that point.
I've tried to incorporate new ways of playing the game. That's why you hear people call me a 'hybrid goalie' and say I adjust to the situation, never doing the same thing over and over like a butterfly goalie. I try to see what works and hopefully with my talent I'm able to play it and make it happen.
There's a lot of guys that are able to perform for a short period of time. It could be a week, it could be a month, it could be two months, it could be one season. It's doing it over and over. And being consistent was something that watching Patrick Roy all these years, that's what he was. He never had down years.
When I get scored on or something doesn't go my way, I think of what I'm able to do and I'm reminded that I'm capable of doing it. I'm honest about myself - I know I'm not going to stop everything, so I don't try for perfection. I'm going to try to get there, but I know I'll never be perfect. I think that helps me to deal with everything.
Coming from Montreal, Patrick Roy was the guy that everybody looked up to. He was consistent and successful early in his career; he won the Stanley Cup when he was really young and he played with a great organization. For me it was also a French thing, like one of us had made it that big in the NHL, and you tried to follow in his footsteps.
I try to eat a lot of carbs, especially the day of the game, because it fills you up. I have my breakfast and I have a huge lunch before I play. For me it's always having pasta and chicken to get some protein in me, so I don't play on an empty stomach at night. The day before a game it's high protein, mostly, with fish or steak, but nothing crazy.