Parenting & Family Quote by Ron Francis

The line reads like the kind of honest surprise you only get from someone who actually made it to the mountaintop and found, unexpectedly, that the view wasn’t lonely. Ron Francis frames his story with the classic Canadian hockey geography: Sault Ste. Marie isn’t just a hometown, it’s a shorthand for rinks, cold mornings, and the quiet belief that greatness is something you chase with your head down. The dream is legible: make the NHL. The twist is that the dream wasn’t the payoff.

“Never did I expect it to be as much fun as it turned out to be” does subtle work. It punctures the myth that elite sports are purely sacrifice-and-suffering, a grind redeemed only by trophies. Francis is admitting that the real reward wasn’t the external validation; it was the daily texture of the job: the speed, the jokes, the locker-room chemistry, the sheer playfulness that survives even inside a business. Coming from a coach and former player known more for consistency than flash, the sentiment lands as credible rather than sentimental.

There’s also a quiet leadership lesson embedded here. By centering “fun,” Francis gives permission for joy to be part of high performance, not an enemy of it. For young players raised on highlight reels and pressure narratives, he’s reframing the NHL less as a distant cathedral and more as a workplace where delight can coexist with discipline. The subtext: if you only chase the dream, you might miss the life inside it.