Making The Impossible Possible

Granato looks to keep growing the game she loves

Nov. 8, 2007

By Elliot Olshansky

CSTV.com


	ELLIOT OLSHANSKY Elliot is CSTV.com's hockey editor and runs his Rink Rat hockey blog on CSTV.com. E-mail here!

Cammi Granato grew up with an impossible dream.

"I wanted to play college hockey at Wisconsin," Granato said Wednesday, before being honored by the NHL as one of four recipients of the 2007 Lester Patrick Award for outstanding service to hockey in the United States. "My brothers were all Wisconsin, so I grew up watching the Badgers for 11 years straight. I was so sad when they didn't have a women's team."

At the time, the Downers Grove, Ill. native had to settle for Providence, where she won three ECAC Player of the Year awards and led the Friars to two ECAC titles, back when that title served as the de facto national championship. Today, though, there is a real national championship, and it belongs to none other than Wisconsin, which has captured the last two NCAA titles under the guidance of Mark Johnson.

"When they got a women's team," Granato said of the Badgers, "I said, `Women's hockey has arrived.' It's been great to see that growth."

Of course, while women's hockey in Madison came along too late for Granato, the growth of the game across the country - which led to the formation of the powerful programs in the west that have captured every single NCAA championship - was very much her doing, thanks to a dream that Granato did get to fulfill.

"I remember being at the Olympic Games and experiencing the Olympics for the first time in my life," Granato said, recalling her 1988 trip to Calgary to watch older brother Tony play for the U.S., "and I remember that it had the most direct impact on me as a person. I saw the opening ceremony, and I was just floored. I was tugging on my mom's jacket, and saying, `Mom, I have to be in the Olympics.'"

At the time, though, Granato thought that her road would be vastly different than her brother's.

"I didn't think it was going to be women's hockey," Granato said, "because I remember saying, `Can I make the men's team? Do you think I could make the men's team?' When you're that age, you just want to get there. You want to figure out every way to get there, so [I thought], `Well, maybe I can play basketball. Maybe I can play another sport.' I was just trying to figure out what I was going to do to get there because I wanted to do anything to get there."

Ten years later, Granato got there, leading the inaugural U.S. Olympic women's hockey team to a gold medal in Nagano. Granato had been part of the U.S. program from its early days in 1990 - "We had to buy our own sweats," Granato recalled, "but I think we got a USA Hockey jacket, which was very exciting" - but reaching the Olympics and claiming the gold medal that had eluded her brother and his teammates.

"That was something that I had dreamed mostly about, the celebration," Granato said of the gold-clinching 3-1 win over Canada, "because I had watched the 1980 team so many times, and that's what you always saw when they showed the '80 team. For me, to be able to whip my stick and gloves up, jump off the bench and just pile on my teammates, that was it for me, and that was unbelievable."

Granato would not know that success again at the Olympic level. Canada claimed the gold in Salt Lake City in 2002, and Granato was cut from the national team in the summer of 2005, in a surprise move that caught the entire women's hockey community off guard. Not surprisingly, that controversial decision is still a very sore subject with the longtime captain, who could only look on as a broadcaster when the U.S. took the bronze medal in Torino after a stunning shootout loss to Sweden in the semifinals.

"I never felt that I was ready to stop," Granato said. "Someone stopped it for me. I had many years left. Someone didn't have the faith in me, but I had the faith in myself. I could have played for years and kept going."

One might think that becoming the first individual woman to receive the Lester Patrick Award - Granato and her gold-medal teammates were honored together in 1999 - might provide a sense of closure to her career as a player that she didn't have when that controversial cut was made. One would be wrong.

"You never get over it," Granato said. "I'll never get over it. This is just an honor [to get the Lester Patrick Award], and it's totally separate. It's what I know about hockey, the good stuff."

Still, Granato's focus remains forward, both on her family - "I have a 10-month-old, so life's kind of been about my little one right now," Granato said - and on her continuing role in the game she loves.

"I've thought about maybe coaching in the future," said Granato, who saw Tony coach four seasons with the Colorado Avalanche, including the better part of two as head coach. "I know I've been behind the bench and I've really enjoyed it."

Some of the players whom Granato played with while wearing the Red, White and Blue have made their way into the coaching ranks, most notably current Boston College head coach Katie King, her assistant coach Courtney Kennedy and Minnesota Duluth assistant Julie Chu.

"It's nice to see the players finally transitioning into coaching," Granato said. "That's great, because for a while, a lot of the players didn't get into coaching when they were done. It's nice to see those guys making an impact and sharing their knowledge, because that's where it's at. They have experience at such a high level, and now they can share that. I'm really happy to see those guys coaching, and I know if I want to get into it at some point too, I could."

Just when and how Granato will join those players in the coaching ranks remains to be seen, but there's no question that she will continue to have a hand in the game she has done so much to grow.

"It took a while," Granato said of understanding her pioneer status, "because I think there were always people before us who didn't get the chance, but when you really look at it, now that we're 10 years from the gold medal, we were the first, and we're always going to be the first, something that, as the years go by, is going to mean more and more."