“There’s no perfect coach in the world. Coaches are human, too. Mistakes are made. But, fundamentally, if you’re sound, you eliminate as many mistakes as possible.”

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.

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

Skating alone is an art. Doing it on a substance? I don’t know. That’s got to be tough.

Not doing it is certainly the best way to not getting it.

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.

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

One hundred percent of shots not taken don’t go in.

Your friends, family, and kids have to understand that’s your priority. It’s the only way you can be successful.

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

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.

It’s just amazing how many companies suddenly want you to hold up their products after you’ve held up the Stanley Cup.

He brings something special. I don’t know what it is, but if you ask him, you couldn’t understand his answer.

The biggest difference between L.A. and Edmonton was that instead of people looking at me I was looking at them.

When I broke into professional hockey at 17 I was told that I was too small and too slow and I wouldn’t make the NHL. Now it’s kind of flip-flopped and the sense is I can’t be a good coach because I was a great athlete.

You know, I’ve held women and babies and jewels and money, but nothing will ever feel as good as holding that Cup.

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.

It is a fundamental rule of human life, that if the approach is good, the response is good.

The fundamental factor of self-deception is this constant desire to be something in this world and in the world hereafter.

To be sure, the fundamental task of management remains the same: to make people capable of joint performance through common goals, common values, the right structure, and the training and development they need to perform and to respond to change.

Every persisting marriage is based on fear’, said Peregrine. ‘Fear is fundamental, you dig down in human nature and what’s at the bottom? Mean spiteful cruel self-regarding fear, whether it makes you to put the foot in it or whether it makes you to cower.

I didn’t arrive at my understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe through my rational mind.

This may be the fundamental problem with caring a lot about what others think: It can put you on the established path–the my-isn’t-that-impressive- path– and keep you there for a long time.

The most essential and fundamental aspect of culture is the study of literature, since this is an education in how to picture and understand human situations.

We were fundamentally the same. They expressed their anger more willingly. We developed the capacity to internalize our anger, using a nonviolent discipline.