Good teams make the playoffs, hot teams win the playoffs.
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.
I've always enjoyed interleague play. It gives you a chance to see different clubs, to go to different places. It gives you a good chance to see where you are, where you stand with other teams.
Battling racism and battling heterosexism and battling apartheid share the same urgency inside me as battling cancer.
Here at Carolina, our World Cup opponents marked their calendars. Obviously the other nations wanted to win every game, but a big upset over the U.S. was something we knew other teams would cherish.
The first thought is always about making the playoffs. That's the tough part. And once you get there, only then you can allow yourself to start thinking how you are going to play in the playoffs against other teams. And a lot is left to chance then. There's an element of luck as well: sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you do not.
Every time when the season starts you have a goal, right? To reach the playoffs. You reach the playoffs, and then the next step is to win the Cup.
When I fell in love with hip-hop, there was a terminology at the time called "battling." All that was just battling with other artists, but after Tupac and those incidents when it spilled into the street and turned into a negative situation, battling turned into a beef. A whole new dynamic.
There's been so many stories throughout the league where teams have started off poorly and ended up in the Finals. Or teams starting out great and not making the playoffs.
Obviously, things evolve; teams see you play a little bit and start try to do things, and the one thing that'll happen is if one team has success in something, you can bet the next three teams are doing some similar things, too.
I've been on teams that lost a hundred games in a season. I've been on teams that had a shot to make the playoffs and fizzled out at the end.
Every year is a new year, and when you look at the turnover year to year, teams that made the playoffs last year aren't a guarantee to make the playoffs this year.
All the projects that coaches go through in the offseason are based on the success other teams had in every area whether it's offense, defense or special teams. What they do is see if they can incorporate anything they see with the people they have.
I want the Saints to be one of those teams where when other teams see us on the schedule, they know they're in for one hell of a game.
You see it for the men's World Cup, fans traveling everywhere to come support their teams.
I've always felt like I'm a winning player. Like I deserved it to be in the playoffs - to be battling.