“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.”

The highest compliment that you can pay me is to say that I work hard every day, that I never dog it.

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

My kids are no different than anyone else’s – they tend to disagree with everything I say!

I played everything. I played lacrosse, baseball, hockey, soccer, track and field. I was a big believer that you played hockey in the winter and when the season was over you hung up your skates and you played something else.

A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.

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.

Most people marry their mother. I married my father.

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

When I played in a 21-team league, there were six or seven goalies who were just average, and the equipment and pads were smaller. I came in the right era. I played for the right team. It was all speed, and creativity and imagination.

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.

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.”

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.

You’ll never catch me bragging about goals, but I’ll talk all you want about my assists.

My best friend had a hockey scholarship at Ohio State, so I would get a couple of pairs at the beginning of the season and send them down to him. They practised two hours a day. He’d skate in them for three weeks then ship them back.

I miss all the shots I don’t take.

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.

There’s a sort of decency among the dead, a remarkable discretion: you never find them making any complaint against the doctor who killed them!

O you who complain to people about your misfortunes, what good will it do you to complain to creatures?

On others pride hushes them to silence; no complaint is made for they scorn pity or sympathy.

First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint the second time.

I feel like all my songs slept-on. I’m not complainin’, but I just wanna drop more heat.

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do. But it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving.

A saint realizes that it is God who engineers his circumstances; consequently there are no complaints, only unrestrained surrender to Jesus.

It is not so much the greatness of our troubles, as the littleness of our spirit, which makes us complain.