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Skills for life

Ice hockey is a very honest game. It teaches you great behaviour skills. It gets you interacting with other people and it allows you to develop your communication skills.

It helps you improve your balance, which you can take into a lot of sports. It can help you if you want to try water skiing. You can roll it into skiing on snow. It can help you out with your golf swing, although you get a bit of slice on it (laughs). It's a little easier when the ball stands still.

Dedication's the name of the game

Discipline is very important. It's like anything, if you want to achieve and be successful, you've got to be dedicated. You have to make sacrifices when you're growing up. As a teenager, if you're playing hockey, you can't be hanging out on street corners getting drunk.

You have to turn your interest to sport. I would play any sport when I was growing up. I'd come home and play basketball or whatever. I still had a good time, but I lived a very active lifestyle. You have to stay focused and you have to work at getting stronger.

I've seen a lot of kids who are great when they're aged 12, and you think they're going to develop into a super star, but they get lost. They think their talent is going to carry them there. You've got to dig in and work hard.

A kid with average skills, who gets bigger and works hard, and develops a reading of the game, can end up with a career. There's no substitution for hard work. We've got a slogan 'If you train hard, you'll not only be hard, you'll be hard to beat.'

Be responsible

Time management is huge when you're playing, and it's huge when you work in a managerial capacity, like I do now. It's all about prioritising, and letting people have areas of control. We've got a small team, and it's about allowing people the responsibility to get on with their jobs.

Good leadership comes from the top. You need to stay positive, and that reflects on how your team operate. You need to give people a pat on the back.

If people get something done, even if it's not 100% to your liking, you can work on those areas, but I don't like criticising people. Every job's tough and I don't criticise people unless something's right out of whack. I've given the team a bit of rope and they've done a great job with it.

The rewards

We had a great run in the early nineties. Winning Wembley for the first time, when the odds were stacked against us, was fantastic. Winning gold in pool B for the Great Britain team, and taking Great Britain into pool A with the top 16 nations in the world, was a big highlight.

I loved every game. I loved winning championships, taking care of other team mates and every aspect of it. It's such a bonding thing. Ice hockey is so team driven, and I've always been a good team player.

A couple of things in the game have gone against me, but I've always given 110%. I'm not one of those guys that, if something didn't go my way, would sit there with my head in my hands. It's all over then. If you're going to get mad, get mad when you're on the ice. Never give up. You can always improve.