Wayne Gretzky Quotes - Page 2

If we're going to change the game it has to start at eight, nine and 10 years old. When we were that age we'd go to the pond or backyard rink and throw a puck on the ice and play five on five, or seven on seven. You get this creativity and this imagination that comes from within, just having fun on the pond. Now kids are so focused on team play, and the coaches are so focused on positioning. You can't change it at the NHL level.

I'm probably the only guy in hockey who can win a scoring title and everybody is saying I had a bad year. I don't worry about it.

When I was 5 and playing against 11-year-olds, who were bigger, stronger, faster, I just had to figure out a way to play with them.

It doesn't matter what I think. It doesn't matter what other people think. You have to get on the ice and participate and play and the best team wins.

It's kind of ironic when I broke in at 17, I was told I was too small, too slow and I wouldn't make the NHL

You miss every shot you don't take.

As a player, you have one responsibility, to focus yourself and be ready for the game. As a coach, your responsibility is to get 20 guys ready and have them all on the same page. If you can't get every guy ready every night, you're going to struggle.

I think a lot of parents live their lives through the kids. Because they didn't make it [achieve something], they want their kids to make it. It puts a lot of undue pressure on the kids.

The only way a kid is going to practise is if it's total fun for him... and it was for me.

It's an honour and a thrill and a privilege just to play in the NHL.

It really doesn't matter or concern me what people are saying or who thinks who is the favorite. The bottom line is you have to play.

Thankfully, in my youth I had the best financial advisor a son could ask for: my dad Walter. When I got that first signing bonus in 1978, Dad took my cheque, announced, 'This is what we're going to do,' and bought an annuity with it.

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.

I don't think any one person will ever be bigger than the game.

Hockey is my life. I love every minute of it.

The game is played out of instinct, but everyone on the ice has habits - good and bad. So the key to the game is to exploit the bad habits of your opponent.

I have absolutely no complaints about my life. But people think I got handed everything, all this kind of fell in my lap, that I was just God-gifted with all this talent. I wanted people to realize it's a lot tougher than just waking up one day and you're in the NHL.

I can remember hockey. It was my life, my passion. It's what I love the most.

A lot of times, I can turn and pass without even looking.

When you're playing an exhibition, you're kind of letting everyone get an opportunity.

Most players go where the puck is. I go where the puck will be.

The last year I was playing, I asked the stick boy to get me a Diet Coke and he said, "Really?" But I always had one on the bench because that's what I did in 1979 when there wasn't Gatorade. If you needed energy you went and got a Snickers or a Kit Kat. Nobody knew any better.

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.

People in general want to build somebody up and then try to knock them down. They always root for the underdog.

What you want to do with your best players is, it doesn't matter how many goals and assists they get, but when they get goals and assists. The best players get them at the most important times, and that's when we need those guys to come through.