Youth Hockey Quotes

When it comes to hockey, it's been in my blood since I was 3 or 4 years old. I love coaching the kids, especially at that level.

Kids don't fight in minor hockey anymore. There's very few fights in junior and college hockey. So growing up, all these guys are not fighting.

This arena is a special place. Everybody loves it. To be able to stand behind the bench and be a part of a great tournament for the '96 Elite is fun. The kids, having a chance to play in the building where the Penguins play, it's a special feeling for them.

I grew up in Wisconsin loving hockey. I mean, I started when I was three years old on skates.

It's only 60,000. It's not a big town. It's a big hockey town. Everybody plays hockey when you grow up.

The kids wait for it to be organized. They want to go play all of these tournaments, for a little practice time. I learned my skills by dropping the puck just with the kids. I think that's missing today.

I grew up here in St. Albert, which is a city just north of Edmonton, and I went to Grade 10 here at Paul Kane High School. But then I went to junior in the WHL, Western Hockey League, at age 16. So I left and went to finish school at Norkam High School in Kamloops for grades 11 and 12.

When I was at the end of middle school and the beginning of high school, I fell in love with hockey in a serious way.

Nobody gives a crap about hockey down here - nobody. I coach kids' hockey down here and you can start to see the disinterest in the game here with the kids.

Where I grew up, hockey was the sport that 90 per cent of black kids at school played.

There's something about playing in junior and being with your buddies all the time and going through that run, it's hard not to fall in love with it.

I think for kids it's the most important part of the game. You have to be able to skate forward and backward, stop and start, go from side to side. Those are the basics of the game.

I started playing for the Flames at 19 but even in minor hockey I remember traveling to Calgary for tournaments, from St. Albert, and I imagined playing in the Saddledome.

I didn't know that I'd like it this much, coaching both boys and coming out all the time and seeing how excited they are to play hockey. It reminds you of when you were that age and you wanted to be out on the ice.

How do we make hockey more affordable? How do we get it into more households? How do we keep it part of the conversation? Those are things that will help us not only increase registration numbers from a grassroots level but also deepen the player pool from the senior national team and the elite level.

I want to work with Indian drag-flickers at the grass-root level and train them.

Just getting young kids excited about hockey, then they'll want to skate, they'll want to start joining junior leagues, they'll want to play in high school, etc., so we're trying to expand at all levels. That's good for the sport, and it's good for the Ducks long term.

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.

We'll have clinics and educational events and conferences to get more and more young players developing as hockey players.

I'm proud to have a small part in the growth of hockey in D.C., but our organization does so much every day to get young kids to play hockey and I'm always appreciative of that.

I want to work on players at school and college level. I will not open an academy but looking to work with the government and Hockey India.