Howard Shapiro > Quotes

“Well, in East Slade, hockey ruled. Oh, the people here loved the high school football team and we had a decent basketball team too, but hockey was king around here.”
― Howard Shapiro, Hockey Player for Life

“I’ll never forget what my dad said as we drove over the Peace Bridge towards Canada for the Etobicoke tournament. He said, “Tom, I’ll tell you something I want you to always remember. Pretty much everything is cleverer in Canada.”

I didn’t even know cleverer was a word, but after traveling there a few times, I had to agree with him. Everything was cleverer in Canada!”
― Howard Shapiro, Hockey Player for Life

“Even though we both won championships that year, it was events that meant more to me than what happened on the ice. It was those lessons I learned just preceding and during the championship season, which still affect me to this very day.”
― Howard Shapiro, Hockey Player for Life

“Even though Coach Brantford was a young guy, he was 24 years old, he had an old school mentality. He probably got that from his dad.”
― Howard Shapiro, Hockey Player for Life

“As I lean back in my chair, it seems like only yesterday as I think back to the mid-‘80s, a time of mullets, Jordache jeans and skinny ties.”
― Howard Shapiro, Hockey Player for Life

“As I lay in bed before leaving for practice, I looked over on my wall and saw the collage of hockey players I did when I was 6 years old for art class. Next to that was a Pittsburgh Penguins pennant and below that was a poster of Wayne Gretzky. It was this really cool photo of him on a pond standing by a net with his Edmonton Oilers jersey on.”
― Howard Shapiro, Hockey Player for Life

“I always loved the sounds you’d hear at a practice. The silence in the cold rink, no one in the stands and then as the guys skated around, you could hear the blades crunching into the ice.

When I would step on the ice for a practice, game or even a public skate, the second I heard that sound of ice meeting metal, I’d smile.”
― Howard Shapiro, Hockey Player for Life

“When I was growing up, playing hockey was what I thought about when I woke up and when I closed my eyes to go sleep. I was still thinking about hockey, hoping I would have a dream that involved the game.”
― Howard Shapiro, Hockey Player for Life

“If you would have asked the coach if he’d like to have a team of players like me, skilled guys who could skate, pass and shoot, play hard, but clean or a team full of players like Billy, who weren’t the most skilled, but who would intimidate and attempt to put an opponent through the boards, he tell you in a nanosecond he’d want a team full of “Billys.”
― Howard Shapiro, Hockey Player for Life

“To Coach Brantford, I could do almost nothing right. He told me that I didn’t play tough enough, I didn’t hit anybody and that my skating and passing needed a lot of work.

If you came to a practice or a game, you’d have never known that I scored 25 goals & had 39 assists what with Coach Brantford always harping on me about something I was doing wrong.”
― Howard Shapiro, Hockey Player for Life