I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.
“I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”
Success comes from anticipating the future and positioning yourself ahead of it, rather than reacting to where things already are.
— Wayne Gretzky, Canada
Source: Wayne Gretzky, widely cited quotation from career interviews (commonly dated to the 1980s); also referenced in "Gretzky: An Autobiography" (1990).
More Proverbs from Canada
Keep your stick on the ice.
Stay alert, stay ready, and keep doing the right thing even when nothing is happening.
Tie up your toque!
Brace yourself — things are about to get intense or exciting.
To speak through one's hat.
To talk about something you know nothing about, or to speak nonsense.
To have a fir tree slipped to you.
To be cheated or swindled in a deal.
Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, and the last river poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money.
Material wealth is worthless if we destroy the natural world that sustains us.
It's cold out.
An emphatic Québécois way of saying it is bitterly, painfully cold.