I will openly admit that I've never really followed hockey. Given my New England upbringing, I have always adhered to the Celtics, Patriots, Red Sox, Bruins mantra of professional sports fandom, but hockey was definitely the lowest sport on the totem pole - even when the Bruins won the Stanley Cup.

Rachel Nichols

/images/quoteimage/al-jourgensen-13983.jpg

I've seen 48 Stanley Cups in my life. I was about six or seven when I started going to games with my dad.

Anyone who plays in the NHL dreams to win the Stanley Cup and I dreamed as well to be one of them and raise the cup in Washington and bring it home to Moscow and celebrate with my friends and my parents.

Alexander Ovechkin

Home Dreams Wit

The most important thing for us is winning the Stanley Cup and I want to win.

Alexander Ovechkin

Winning Win Want

Hopefully my time in Nashville has helped me. We've had a lot of different things happen to our hockey club, seen a lot of different situations and different types of clubs from an expansion team to a Stanley Cup playoff threat. I think any coach that's gone through those things, you become a better coach.

Barry Trotz

Time Hope You

That's what they hired me to do in Washington, change a little bit of the culture, try to win a Stanley Cup.

Barry Trotz

Change Win Washington

Growing up in Canada, most kids from Canada dream of playing in the NHL, and they also hope one day to be on a Stanley Cup team. That was a big goal.

Bobby Orr

Hope Yin Wing

If you are not playing for the Stanley Cup at the end of the year, what's the point? If you don't win, you may as well not make the playoffs, because you are loser just like everyone else.

Brad Marchand

You Yin Year

Winning the Stanley Cup in '99 was a dream come true. I'll never forget it.

Ed Belfour

Winning Win Up

I'm competitive. I'd love another chance to be part of a Stanley Cup championship team. That'd be awesome.

Ed Belfour

Pet Love Chance

The school I went to was a little farm school in Wannaska, student body 61 or something. There was a kid, the only black kid in our county, Dustin Byfuglien. He won the Stanley Cup a couple years back with the Blackhawks. Out of a class of 21 kids, he and I always had to be on opposite teams on everything because we were the most athletic.

Garrett Hedlund

Years Year Won

It's a Stanley Cup thing. The boys mangle one another for a series, performing all kinds of nasty tricks, then they make nice, shaking soggy hands as the teams shuffle in opposite directions.

George Vecsey

Up Tricks Trick

War of attrition, war of wills. That's what the Stanley Cup playoffs are - more intense, more physical and more prolonged than the playoffs of any other sport.

George Vecsey

War Wills Will

Stanley Cup hockey comes around every year, when games start to count in multiples of best-of-seven series, and the players seem to put more attention into every pass, every check, every annoying little trick.

George Vecsey

Art Yin Year

I say the Islanders were the best team I ever covered because they had more so many stars who delivered with Canadian-Swedish-suburban modesty. And they won four straight Stanley Cups from 1980 through 1983.

George Vecsey

Won Wit Who

Certain Stanley Cup traditions remain intact, including the handshake line between players who had been belting one another for a couple of weeks.

George Vecsey

Who Weeks Week

For good reasons, there are no ties during the Stanley Cup season. Somebody needs to win so the lads can get out to their cottages on the lakes, where all hockey players spend their summers, or so I have been told.

George Vecsey

Good Age Win

You do not play hockey for good seasons. You play to win the Stanley Cup. It has to be the objective.

Guy Lafleur

Good You Win

Being drafted by the Montreal Canadiens, that was the greatest moment in my career. And stealing the Stanley Cup in 1978 and bringing it back to my hometown of Thurso.

Guy Lafleur

Mom Men Home

You have to want to put a competitive, Stanley Cup-caliber team on the ice in contrast to wanting to hopefully someday financially break even. So you have to really balance expenses with revenue.

Henry Samueli

Pet Hope You

I love the Stanley Cup playoffs.

J. J. Watt

Love Up Tan

Dedicating your life to something, dedicating time to something, ending up achieving it and maybe doing better than that. Me personally, that would be a Stanley Cup. That's something I've dreamed of my whole life. I think that's why every hockey player at this level plays.

Jack Hughes

John Davidson is one of the premier executives in the National Hockey League. As we continue to build a team that can consistently compete for the Stanley Cup, John's knowledge of the game and his experience and passion for the Rangers logo make him the ideal choice to oversee our Hockey Operations department.

James L. Dolan

I've always dreamt of being on a Stanley Cup-winning team. That always stayed with me.

Jarome Iginla

I've been fortunate enough to have a lot of neat experiences, Olympics and everything, getting to the Stanley Cup Finals was really cool, but to actually make the NHL was just something I don't think I or my family will ever forget.

Jarome Iginla

Here in Denver, we want to thank Jeremy Jacobs for the way he runs his business. Otherwise, we wouldn't have gotten Ray Bourque and won a Stanley Cup.

Joe Sakic

As a kid, you dream of winning the Stanley Cup. As you get older, you understand the importance of winning the Olympics.

Joe Sakic

I don't even know what the odds are for one kid or one team to make it here. Obviously, being from Canada this is their Stanley Cup - they made it. It's hard enough to get here and it's hard enough to advance.

John Atkinson

All the people that come out and show their support and their pride for your accomplishments, I think it really reminds you that without people you don't ever to get to live that dream. To play in the NHL is one thing, but to win the Stanley Cup and come back and share it with everyone is another thing.

Jonathan Toews

They let me put the Stanley Cup in my car. I got hookups.

Lil Jon

People ask if I regret not winning a Stanley Cup, but winning the series against the Soviet Union was the best. It was the greatest experience of my hockey career by far.

Marcel Dionne

He's only 4 years old, so I don't think he realized, you know, that I played so many years. Of course, we watch tapes here from the Stanley Cup years, but I don't think he realized how many years I played.

Mario Lemieux

I think to compare any time you win a Stanley Cup would be unfair to all the players from all the teams.

Mark Messier

I had never won anything until I won my first Stanley Cup.

Martin Brodeur

Coming from Montreal, Patrick Roy was the guy that everybody looked up to. He was consistent and successful early in his career; he won the Stanley Cup when he was really young and he played with a great organization. For me it was also a French thing, like one of us had made it that big in the NHL, and you tried to follow in his footsteps.

Martin Brodeur

It's a big step to be drafted. Ultimately, it's everybody's dream. That's where you start thinking about making the team, maybe about winning the Stanley Cup.

Martin Brodeur

In New Jersey, we won in '95, but after that for four years we never had a sniff at it. The next thing you know we went on a run of three Stanley Cup Finals in four years in 2000, 2001 and 2003.

Martin Brodeur

When you're a kid you always played to win a Stanley Cup in the streets or on the outdoor rinks, and when you do it for real, it's a pretty cool moment, it's something that I'm always going to remember.

Martin Brodeur

I have done a lot of NFL games, a season-opening home games, playoff games, championship games, and of course Stanley Cup games, World Series, NBA championship games. But I have never done a Superbowl. It's probably the only major sporting event I've never done and I would like to.

Michael Buffer

I've been blessed with doing something I love and then at the same time, do introductions at World Series, Stanley Cup championships, NFL playoff games and a lot of commercials. No regrets at all.

Michael Buffer

Months after I retired, the Kings won the Stanley Cup and I was there for that game... I happened to be there with a buddy of mine and I was like, 'Oh, I miss this.'

Nnamdi Asomugha

I've never been short of putting high expectations on myself; I've never been short of saying I want to win a Stanley Cup.

P.K. Subban

I want a Stanley Cup.

P.K. Subban

To win the Stanley Cup is such a process and it takes everybody on board.

P.K. Subban

It was a dream come true for me to play with the Montreal Canadiens, and the sad thing is that my promise to the city of bringing a Stanley Cup back and wanting to win one, I won't be able to fulfill that promise.

P.K. Subban

It's obviously disappointing and surreal when you see someone else win the Stanley Cup.

Patrick Kane

I will openly admit that I've never really followed hockey. Given my New England upbringing, I have always adhered to the Celtics, Patriots, Red Sox, Bruins mantra of professional sports fandom, but hockey was definitely the lowest sport on the totem pole - even when the Bruins won the Stanley Cup.

Rachel Nichols

Individual honors and scoring championships are great, but my No. 1 goal is to win the Stanley Cup.

Sidney Crosby

We have to get better at that. All of the Stanley Cup winning teams throughout the past few seasons, when they needed to play defense, they did it. If you can play defense, that's when you know it's game over.

Steve Yzerman

Through the years, I have so many wonderful memories of playing with the Red Wings: winning four Stanley Cups, scoring big goals, going into battle every night side by side with my teammates, playing with every ounce of effort I could muster.

Ted Lindsay