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.
WAYNE GRETZKYEverything I did in hockey, I worked for.
More Wayne Gretzky Quotes
-
-
The only way a kid is going to practice is if it’s total fun for him and it was for me.
WAYNE GRETZKY -
Skating alone is an art. Doing it on a substance? I don’t know. That’s got to be tough.
WAYNE GRETZKY -
When people come up to me and say, “I was at your Game 7 in the playoffs in Toronto,” or, “I saw your first goal in the NHL,” that triggers memories. But I don’t sit around my kitchen table and tell my kids, “You know, one year I got 92 goals.”
WAYNE GRETZKY -
I can’t remember the last time I went to a game and there was a fight. I think they fight more in baseball now than they do in hockey.
WAYNE GRETZKY -
Lifting the Stanley Cup for the first time. There’s nothing like it. It’s the greatest story. In my era, they used to say you couldn’t be a superstar without winning one. I remember thinking when I lifted it: “Now they can’t say that about me.”
WAYNE GRETZKY -
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.
WAYNE GRETZKY -
Canadian players have started to put more of an importance on the World Championships in the sense that as soon as they lose, they are called, they want to go play and they don’t go only on the basis of if they are injured.
WAYNE GRETZKY -
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.
WAYNE GRETZKY -
I miss all the shots I don’t take.
WAYNE GRETZKY -
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.
WAYNE GRETZKY -
That’s the hardest part of this whole process. The best part is picking the players and the worst part is telling basically five players they are not going to play tonight.
WAYNE GRETZKY -
Most people marry their mother. I married my father.
WAYNE GRETZKY -
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.
WAYNE GRETZKY -
One of the key qualities that you need to be a great hockey player is fantastic anticipation and feel for the game – if you know where the puck is going before it is hit, that is half the battle.
WAYNE GRETZKY -
I really wanted to write a book [99: Stories of the Game] on the tradition and history of the league, where kids can pick it up and read it and learn things and say, “Geez, I didn’t know that. That’s pretty cool.”
WAYNE GRETZKY