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Sports Quote by Teemu Selanne

"You keep shooting. You hope it goes in, and you smile"

About this Quote

There is a kind of stubborn innocence baked into "You keep shooting. You hope it goes in, and you smile" - the mindset of someone who has lived through the brutal math of elite sport and still refuses to treat it like a spreadsheet. Selanne, the Finnish hockey icon whose career was built on goals, reduces success to three verbs: persist, believe, enjoy. It reads like locker-room simplicity, but the subtext is sharper: in a game where chance, deflections, hot goalies, and bad bounces can erase your best effort, the only sane response is to keep generating attempts and protect your own morale.

"Keep shooting" is also a quiet argument against perfectionism. It rejects the highlight-reel culture that pretends goals arrive as destiny. Hockey rewards volume, not just brilliance; the line nods to that reality without turning it into cynicism. "You hope it goes in" admits the limits of control, which is a rare kind of humility from a scorer - an acknowledgment that confidence isn't certainty, it's a decision you make repeatedly under pressure. And "you smile" is the tell: joy as a competitive tactic. The smile isn't just celebration; it's self-preservation, a way to stay loose, to signal resilience to teammates, to refuse the spiral of frustration that turns a slump into an identity.

Context matters here: a veteran speaking from the long view, where longevity isn't only about talent, but about keeping your head light enough to keep firing.

Quote Details

TopicSports
SourceHelp us find the source
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Selanne, Teemu. (2026, January 16). You keep shooting. You hope it goes in, and you smile. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/you-keep-shooting-you-hope-it-goes-in-and-you-119713/

Chicago Style
Selanne, Teemu. "You keep shooting. You hope it goes in, and you smile." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/you-keep-shooting-you-hope-it-goes-in-and-you-119713/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"You keep shooting. You hope it goes in, and you smile." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/you-keep-shooting-you-hope-it-goes-in-and-you-119713/. Accessed 25 Feb. 2026.

More Quotes by Teemu Add to List
Keep Shooting: Teemu Selanne on Scoring, Joy, and Resilience
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About the Author

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Teemu Selanne (born July 3, 1970) is a notable figure from Finland.

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