My knees started to shake. In the dressing room that night, I was so nervous I couldn't tie my skates. Maurice Richard walked over and held out his h… - Jacques Plante

Our hockey team consisted of boys seventeen and eighteen years old and I used to watch them play all the time on the outdoor rink. On this one day, I remember it was very cold and I was looking at the game while standing indoors with my back against a stove. The goalie was having trouble and the coach accused him of not doing his best. The goalie was mad and took his skates off. I rushed toward the coach and volunteered to take his place. There was no other goalie around, so I went in the net and played with them the rest of the season.

Hockey is an art. It requires speed, precision, and strength like other sports, but it also demands an extraordinary intelligence to develop a logical sequence of movements, a technique which is smooth, graceful and in rhythm with the rest of the game.

I was with the [Quebec] Citadelles. We had four defensemen. One couldn't skate backwards. Another couldn't turn to his left. The others were slow. It was a case of me having to go and get the puck when it was shot into our end because our defense couldn't get there fast enough. The more I did it, the farther I went. It seemed to be the best thing to do, so I did it and it worked." Plante continued, "Possession of the puck is number one. That's all I'm doing—getting control until one of my teammates comes along."