“It’s better to be lucky than good.”
It’s a pretty straightforward saying. While talent and skill go a long way, you often need a bit more than just that to make it happen. Every champion in any sport has some good bounces along the way, often while being very good (if not great)–it’s just the nature of things.
That is especially the case for hockey, a game with a hard, non-spherical thing made of rubber, which loves to carom off in unexpected directions, sliding around on a surface that degrades as it’s played upon. You want to be good, of course, but you need the Hockey Gods to shine their favor upon you as well.