Motivation Quote by Brett Hull

In Brett Hull's world, "You have to know how to score" is less a motivational poster than a blunt job description. Hockey romanticizes grit, heart, and "playing the right way", but Hull is talking about the one skill that makes all the other virtues negotiable: putting the puck in the net when it matters. The line works because it's almost offensively obvious, the kind of simplicity that sounds like nothing until you realize how few players can actually do it.

Intent-wise, Hull is drawing a hard boundary between activity and outcome. Plenty of athletes can skate, check, backcheck, keep possession, win board battles. Scoring is different. It's a form of literacy: reading angles, timing chaos, anticipating rebounds, knowing when to shoot, when to wait, when to cheat a half-step into space. "Know" implies craft and instinct, not just effort. You can practice it, but you can't fake it.

The subtext is a subtle flex and a critique. Hull, one of the era's purest finishers, is implicitly arguing for the legitimacy of the specialist in a sport that often moralizes selflessness. It's also a reminder that pressure is the real opponent. Everyone can score in drills; "knowing how" is doing it with defenders, fatigue, and consequence closing in.

Contextually, it lands in the late-80s to early-2000s NHL ethos: systems hockey, tighter checking, fewer clean looks. In that environment, scoring isn't a vibe - it's rare currency. Hull's sentence is the sound of someone who spent a career cashing it.