Motivation Quote by Ted Lindsay

“Starting that union” lands with the plainspoken force of a player who knows the game isn’t just played on ice. Ted Lindsay isn’t dressing this up as a heroic crusade; the sentence is almost stubbornly understated, which is exactly why it hits. “Something I believed in very strongly” is an athlete’s vocabulary for what was, in context, a radical act: trying to organize NHL players in an era when owners controlled salaries, movement, and even the contours of a career with near-feudal authority.

The intent is practical, not poetic. Lindsay is marking unionization as a choice rooted in conviction rather than opportunism. That matters because players who pushed for collective power were often painted as greedy, disloyal, or “bad for the room.” His phrasing quietly rejects that smear. Belief, here, isn’t sentimental; it’s a spine. The subtext is the cost: blacklisting, trades meant as punishment, reputational attacks, the message to every other player that dissent has consequences. By keeping the sentence simple, he refuses to dramatize the sacrifice while making it unmistakable.

Culturally, it reframes the romantic myth of the loyal, grateful athlete. Lindsay is pointing to a time before “player empowerment” became a marketing phrase, when labor rights in sports were still being invented in public. The line reads like a personal recollection, but it functions as a reminder: modern free agency, pensions, and minimum salaries didn’t arrive through nostalgia or nice owners. They came because someone decided belief was worth the blowback.