Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Aggression is part of the masculine design, we are hardwired for it.... Little girls do not invent games where large numbers of people die, where bloodshed is a prerequisite for having fun. Hockey, for example, was not a feminine creation. Nor was boxing. A boy wants to attack something - and so does a man, even if it's only a little white ball on a tee.
Wayne Gretzky's talent doesn't come from studying everything he's experienced in hockey and making long-term game plans. It comes from constantly taking in all the data that's happening in the moment on the ice, and instantly generating constant predictions based on super-efficient mental models he's built in his head. Technology has to work more like Gretzky.
That's right, Mitt Romney took on Evander Holyfield in a boxing match for charity, and it was a pretty one-sided fight. But it was still not the worst boxing match we've seen this month. This weekend Vladimir Putin played in an exhibition hockey game with some former NHL players and scored eight goals. Even Evander Holyfield and Mitt Romney said, 'That looks fake.'
Obviously, we were fortunate to win the hockey game, and we'll take it, because there have been some games that we haven't been fortunate enough in. I don't think we played exceptionally well from any standpoint, other than our first period. And our goaltender really stole the game for us. In all reality, you have to give him credit for the win. He stole the points.
Talented people can predict with great accuracy what's about to happen just a tiny bit ahead of their competitors. It might be two seconds ahead, or two hundredths of a second, or two days. Napoleon on an eighteenth century battlefield had something more like a two-day advantage. Wayne Gretzky in a hockey game was probably a second ahead of everyone else on the ice.
I am not afraid to stop the puck with my head. I try to do it sometimes even in practice; not everyday but once in a while, I say to my teammates, shoot me in my head and I'll try to stop the puck. I am not afraid at all of the puck, so sometimes, if the shot comes at my head, it's an easier save to make with your head. Maybe the people think a different way, but for me, I do it with my head.
I think we came out the last couple of game and have been able to get it going. The first couple we were tentative a little bit, that energy, maybe excite. I saw in the last couple of games we've been able to channel that and use it in a positive way to go, be aggressive, physical and skate. When we're skating and physical we're at our best and put a lot of pressure on the other team that way.
A lot of what I know as a filmmaker is because of hockey. That's teamwork, and being able to collaborate with people, and be creative with them, and get the most out of everybody. Everyone's got different talents, and you've got to bring out the best of everybody, and use your strengths and work together, and try and evolve it rather than do what was done before you, and to push into new areas.
Made up of corallitic accretions and painful increments, lit on rare occasions by bolts of revelation, and then stuffed behind the wainscotting to grope in the mouse-turd dust, art is the equivalent of athlete's foot, at best an exquisite itch, at worst an excuse to stop walking. On the emotional side, it is either masturbation with a hockey glove or a night beneath the sliding moon that shames Eros.
One ironic thing is that although (the Soviet Union) was one of the most oppressive systems, with no respect for the individual, it somehow produced the freest hockey on the planet. These guys, when they got on the ice, it was like watching jazz. They could do anything. I find that a paradox. It's interesting because I think the North American style was a lot less free. It was not encouraged to be creative.
Just because you've had one or two of those games, you can't really go back to the next practice and change everything. That's the most important thing in those situations that you don't think too much, you don't try to change too much because then you're going to be in deep trouble, that's what I think. It's all about keep working on what's been successful for you and keep believing what you're doing is the right thing.
In and of itself, sports may be trivial, but as a symbol of the American way of life, it has enormous weight. We are seen, worldwide, as an enormously competitive, enthusiastic people who work as hard as we play and play as hard as we work. When baseball - which has traditionally canceled one day of games for huge national celebrations or disasters - stops play for six days, that has reverberations in the national consciousness.
I think it was good, we wanted to win no matter if it was 1-0 or 8-2, we got to win. The Russians are a great team, but so are we. So we've gotta prepare the way we can and play the way we can tomorrow. I think that every game, every practice together we've continue to get better. It's tough in these short tournaments you gotta bond quickly and you've gotta have good chemistry; so hopefully now we can build on that and keep going.
Last night, we did the Threatdown -- God, it's hard to even talk about this -- and for the first time, I didn't mention bears. It's winter, they're asleep, I didn't think it would be a problem. But today I see this in the Toronto Globe and Mail -- apparently a 700-pound polar bear showed up at a children's hockey game. I've said this before, they're after our kids -- they're tender, juicy, you don't even have to throw away the bones.
What I found interesting about Slava Fetisov was that he went through three different generations of Soviet hockey. In the late 70's, he experienced the Miracle on Ice, and then in the 80's became with his teammates the Russian Five, the most dominant team in the history of hockey, and then helped bring down the hockey system when the Soviet Union collapsed and became one of the first players to play in the NHL, and then ultimately came back to Russia.
It's tough, it's not the scenario that we wanted for sure. I thought our desperation was there, we worked hard, but it was one game, a lot can happen, they're a good team, and unfortunately we didn't win. We had some bad bounces, and in one game those make a big difference, and unfortunately it didn't go our way. But if we play hard like that, we play desperate like that and control the puck the way we did down low, I like our chances against any team.
I'm not sure Mario is going to get accolafes he deserves, especially from outside the game. But from within, the players, the people who follow closely, realize exactly what he's broughtto the table, exactly what he has done. People tend to forget... hockey was dying in Pittsburgh before he got there. I played there. It was almost dead. I'm sorry, but the NHL would not have a franchise in Pittsburgh today had Mario not come along. Think about it, no hockey in Pittsburgh.
The Tragically Hip, more so than any other band I've worked with, approach their work like a team. This might sound way too pat, but they're like a great hockey team: all five of them have their roles. They go at their shows like an athletic event; they're in it to win it, and they'll lay it out there on the proverbial ice in order to win and get the crowd on their side. You can't do that when you just throw a band together. There's a sixth sense there that makes it easy.
Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity. The relationship between the soundness of the body and the activities of the mind is subtle and complex. Much is not yet understood. But we do know what the Greeks knew: that intelligence and skill can only function at the peak of their capacity when the body is healthy and strong; that hardy spirits and tough minds usually inhabit sound gods.
I'm no shrinking violet. I played hockey until half my teeth were knocked down my throat. And I'm extremely competitive on a tennis court. . . But that experience at the slaughterhouse overwhelmed me. When I walked out of there, I knew I would never again harm an animal! I knew all the physiological, economic, and ecological arguments supporting vegetarianism, but it was firsthand experience of man's cruelty to animals that laid the real groundwork for my commitment to vegetarianism.
If the government is to try and ban private consumption of alcohol and tobacco, it must surely ban such activities as hang-gliding, skiing, rock-climbing and so on. Where should it stop? Rugby? American Football? Ice Hockey? Insofar as the government has information not generally available about the merits or demerits of the items we ingest or the activities we engage in, let it give us the information. But let it leave us free to choose what chances we want to take with our own lives.
About the last thing I ever wanted in life was a knighthood, and even today some forty years after the event, I find it difficult to come to terms with a life where old and valued friends insist on calling me 'Sir' instead of Don, simply because they think it is protocol. But I have consciously shouldered these burdens because I felt that I was the medium through which cricket could achieve a higher status and gain maximum support from the people, not only in Australia but throughout the world.
But in my mind, I don't think there's any question Sidney Crosby is the best all-around player in the game. His hockey sense is so strong and so solid, combined with his God-gifted talent of being able to see the ice, see the entire picture in front of him. And, most importantly, I don't care how good you are, if you don't have a work ethic, it doesn't matter. There's no question that each and every game, he's one of the hardest-working guys on the ice. In my mind, he's the best player in the game today.
When I first began examining the global-warming scare, I found nothing more puzzling than the way officially approved scientists kept on being shown to have finagled their data, as in that ludicrous "hockey stick" graph, pretending to prove that the world had suddenly become much hotter than at any time in 1,000 years. Any theory needing to rely so consistently on fudging the evidence, I concluded, must be looked on not as science at all, but as simply a rather alarming case study in the aberrations of group psychology.
Two or three years ago, every game I want to score. And after I score a goal I have a spark and I'm so happy I want more. Now I'mkind of different. I'm not saying I lost my spark - I still have it - but I don't chase the goal as much as I used to. I'm playing for the team andI still know I can score, but it's different than two or three years back.Look at great teams like Detroit a couple of years ago; they winthe Stanley Cup and guys only score 25 goals, nobody has a really big season. You have to play defense, that's how you win.
America's belated embrace of government health care is going to be far more expensive and disastrous than the Euro-Canadian models. Whatever one's philosophical objection to the Canadian health system, it is, broadly, fair: Unless you're a cabinet minister or a big time hockey player, you'll enjoy the same equality of crappiness and universal lack of access that everybody else does. But, even before it's up-and-running, Pelosi-Reid-Obamacare is an impenetrable thicket of contradictory boondoggles, shameless payoffs and arbitrary shakedowns.
I'm process-orientated, and people say that about the details. But I love the players. My No. 1 job is to make them better men. My No. 2 job is to make them better at hockey, and I never confuse that. The best people I've ever been around in my life never let me get away with anything - ever. You can have all the details in the world, but if you can't communicate with people and find a way to help them help themselves, you have no chance in this league. To me, that's what the profession is about: getting guys to believe in themselves and each other.
The whole world knows that American TV companies have monopolized Olympic broadcasts and in order to please the fans in their country they do everything they can to keep American viewers interested in what is going on at the hockey rink in Sochi. According to their logic, Americans should always win, no matter what. It was absolutely obvious that [Fyodor] Tyutin's goal yesterday should have been allowed. This was clear to the whole world except the American referee, American TV and those officials with American passports who rule international hockey, grossly neglecting all Olympic principles.
