Rick Westhead > Quotes

“To critique hockey culture is to be anti-hockey. To be anti-hockey is to be anti-Canadian. When shots are taken”
― Rick Westhead, We Breed Lions: Confronting Canada's Troubled Hockey Culture

“We are naked together in locker rooms four times a day and alone together on the bus for God knows how many hours, and it is ingrained in us that our teammates are our brothers. We are expected to have each other's back, to lie for each other if we have to. Civilians wouldn't understand it. When we look around the room, we see twenty clones of ourselves and we all know we are better than everyone else. This is our culture. We breed lions, and how do you tell a lion to stop being a lion?”
― Rick Westhead, We Breed Lions: Confronting Canada's Troubled Hockey Culture

“A number of other NHL players in the 1950s and ‘60s worked odd jobs to supplement their pro hockey income. Those stories are impossible for any young prospect to identify with now. Today young minor hockey players in Canada are pursued by player agents before they are teenagers, while playing for teams that are supposed to be not-for-profit organizations but are actually bought and sold for millions of dollars.”
― Rick Westhead, We Breed Lions: Confronting Canada's Troubled Hockey Culture

“As long as hockey remains insular with people who move through the system [and] are the ones who come back and train the next generation of players, hockey will be stuck.”
― Rick Westhead, We Breed Lions: Confronting Canada's Troubled Hockey Culture

“Boynton told me that he had shared with investigators that Aldrich’s predatory behaviour was well known in the locker room.”
― Rick Westhead, We Breed Lions: Confronting Canada's Troubled Hockey Culture