Gary Bettman Quotes

There was a time there in the mid '80s to the '90s there that we played six finals, three Canada Cups, we were playing hockey almost 10 months a year for a long time there.

Hockey lends itself to special events, including the Olympic competition: a glorious tournament of the best players in the world, putting on their national jerseys and playing on big rinks with no-goon Olympic rules and referee enforcement.

Hockey suffers from being compared to itself in ways that other sports are not. Every four years, some of us fawn over Olympic hockey, a great event with bigger rinks, minimal goonishness and national pride in addition to the heightened skills of veritable all-star squads.

Ever since I was a kid and all the time I have played in the NHL, NHL players have played in the Olympic Games.

I think Hero Hockey India League is the world's best hockey league.

I wanted to take up a sport the real way and see if I actually had athletic ability. And then I happened to see it was during the Atlanta Olympics. And there was a lot of coverage of archery because the U.S. men's team won all the medals. And I thought, "Wow, that's beautiful. And it's so dramatic, a beautiful sport. And I wonder if I would be good at it?"

It's frustrating in the sense that I still think I could be competing at some sport at a fairly high level, which nobody cares about. Nobody wants to hear me say that.

I was so tall in high school that I was convinced that I was uncoordinated and not athletic. I was terrified to play any sport at all, no matter how hard they tried to convince me to be on the girls' basketball team as the tallest kid in class.

I'm actually pretty good at tennis. Well, if I'm in the Special Olympics or something.

In the past two or three years, the number of clubs has doubled ... we've got close to 8 000 players, about 60 to 80 clubs. It's not restricted to the metros any more, it's gone rural.

I didn't play much ball. I wasn't much of a ball fan.

I look at it as a challenge, ... I'm not going to put too much added pressure on myself. I want to play in the NHL, and after that [happens], I can worry about things beyond that.

NHL is the best league in the world and I feel that I should play in the best league in the world. Money's not an issue and you cannot buy happiness.

I played Little League and in high school. I played more over the years whenever there was a pick-up game... usually softball.

Everyone is an athlete. The only difference is that some of us are in training, and some are not.

The general definition of being muscle-bound is that you have so many muscles that you can't move freely. I don't know of any bodybuilder in that category; in fact, many of them are quite active in other sports.

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

I didn't push any of my kids into golf, and they played golf because they wanted to.

I went from junior hockey to the World Junior Championships to the combine and the draft, to the Blackhawks camp, and then a full NHL season and then the World Championships. At nineteen, that's exhausting.

Approximately four years ago, we were told that Jerry Rice would be a free agent and there were people who felt that he no longer could contribute.

I've played rugby at school a bit. I didn't play football at school; I played football after school.

I played no sports well. Because I was a boy in the United States Of America, I was forced into Little League and played horrible Little League baseball, and played football and basketball in school situations where I was forced to.

It's about stepping up on the big stage. The athlete who can do that is goig to do well.

Tim Duncan's foot issue, I think, is a major factor in this year's playoffs. That's not the kind of injury that gets better over time playing NBA basketball.

I grew up such a fan. It was my life. Everything I did was hockey related and everything I have is because of hockey and the NHL.