My dad became a soap opera actor, and I was an extra in a skating rink scene on the soap. I didn't audition. It was nepotism all the way.
I don't think anything in my game has regressed in the last couple years. I think I've only gotten better. I keep wanting to assume more responsibility in all parts of the rink.
You do your job, you get your work done at the rink and then you go home. The big thing is figuring out what you're going to do the rest of the day.
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 don't want you at the rink, we don't want you in the stadium, we don't want you to watch hockey.
As a Canadian it's something you grow up with. Where I'm from in Canada the ground usually freezes in late October and the lake is frozen until late March. We learn to skate at a young age and I learned to skate when I was three. I was on an outdoor rink when I was three-years-old.
I was a mechanic at a go-cart place, a deejay at a roller rink, a telemarketer in New York, a grocery bagger.
If I had never won a single medal, I'd still be skating in a rink somewhere. There wouldn't be an audience or camera flashes or autograph seekers, but I'd still be skating.
All those hours spent alone on the rink is where a skater's strength comes from. That's where a standing ovation starts and if you don't want to be there, it is going to show. Nothing you dreamed about is going to happen if you forget why you started in the first place. You have to skate with you heart. Before anyone can believe in you, you have to believe in yourself.
I believe this all has to do with how I decide to perceive the experience. Pain is part of life and makes you who you are meant to be. I just let it flow through me, at whatever rate it decides to do so. Then I go to the hockey rink and hit a few slap shots.
My sport taught me what I could do with my talents, whether in the rink or in the rest of my life
I think there are people who do write regionally, because that's their subject matter - the way the sunset looks over a strip mall, memories of flirting at the ice rink, waking up to a deer at the window. . . Up to now, that hasn't been mine.
