With the NHL playoffs just around the corner, I thought I would offer up a few words of encouragement for fans, players and coaches. Whether your team is struggling for a playoff spot, sitting at the top of the standings, or completely out of the race, please feel free to find peace and inspiration in the following quotes…

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
- Henry David Thoreau, writer and philosopher

Kick Out the Jams, Brothers and Sisters!!!!!
- From a live recording of the Blue Oyster Cult song, Kick out The Jams

If you do things well, do them better. Be daring, be first. Be different, be just.
-Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
- Oscar Wilde, poet

Your work ethic has got to equal the opportunity.
- NHL coach, Mike Babcock during the 2003 Stanley Cup Final while he was coaching the Mighty Ducks. The Ducks had just lost the first two games against the New Jersey Devils. Five games later, the Devils hoisted the Cup.

The past you cannot change, the future will never come, but you can live in successive moments of now.
- Kirpal Singh Ji Maharaj (one of my personal faves.)

If any one can do it, you can.
- My mom, Stella Ovens. Mom has said this to me on several occasions…thanks mom!

I’ve come here to kick ass and chew bubble gum...and I’m all out of bubble gum.
-  Roddy Piper, from the movie, They Live

This is a long one…

Oh, the places you’ll go! There’s fun to be done. There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball (or puck) will make you the winning-est winner of all. Fame! You’ll be famous as famous can be, with the whole wide world watching you win on TV. Except when they don’t. Because, sometimes they won’t. I’m afraid that some times you’ll play lonely games too. Games you can’t win ‘cause you’ll play against you.
- Dr. Seuss, author, excerpt from Oh the Places You’ll Go!

This is a wonderful little passage from a children’s book that’s big on life and living.  However, Oh the Places You’ll Go is adult friendly, too. Buy the book for your birthday, and give it to yourself.

 As always in life, bravery is more fulfilling.
- “I don’t know who said that…but it works for me.” Lisa Ovens

Faith is to believe what you do not yet see. The reward for that faith is to see what you believe.
- This quote was hand written on a board in the Detroit Red Wings locker room during the 1998 Stanley Cup Final. I don’t know who said it, but it worked because the Wings won the Cup.

Go Everybody GO!