Peter Puck practises, and so should you.

So you want to be a hockey star? Before you start acing shots top shelf and hitting the tape on every pass, you need to remember that hard work and dedication are keys to success.

Youngsters across Canada dream of following in the footsteps of hockey greats like Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux. Those guys were amazing, but they weren't always ice legends. They started out as kids who had a passion for the game and loved to play all day, every day.

Sidney Crosby loved to practise, practise, and practise some more. He used to drive his mother crazy when he would go down to the basement of their Nova Scotia home and bang hockey pucks off the open clothes dryer just to improve his aim.

Before Lemieux used real hockey equipment, he used to practise with his brothers using wooden spoons as hockey sticks and bottle caps as pucks. His parents would sometimes shovel snow onto their living room carpet when it got too dark outside to play.

Gretzky started to play hockey when he was three years old on a rink that his dad built for him and his brothers in their backyard. They would skate around bleach bottles and tin cans and flip pucks over scattered hockey sticks, catching the puck on the stick before they hit the ice.

Success in almost everything has much more to do with the amount of time we spend working at it than innate talent.

So, hit the ice, skate your heart out, cut to the puck hard and keep trying those one-timers; in no time, you'll be able to see how your practise pays off.