'She can play'
Cammi Granato good as gold in All-Star setting
Posted: Sunday January 24, 1999 08:40 AM
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Over the top: Sunbelt Heroes Cammi Granato flies over goaltender Darren Pang AP |
By Denise N. Maloof, CNN/SI
TAMPA, Fla. -- Smack in the middle of Saturday's Heroes of Hockey Old-Timers' Game was a hero of another kind -- U.S. women's Olympic gold medalist Cammi Granato.
Invited to play with the Sunbelt Heroes against the NHL Heroes during the NHL's 49th All-Star Weekend, Granato found herself skating among the Howe family -- "Mr. Hockey" Gordie, and sons Mark and Marty -- and exchanging passes with former Tampa Bay coach Terry Crisp.
"I was skating around out there the whole time just smiling," Granato said. "I kept saying, 'You are so lucky, you are so lucky.' "
She was a hit, too, with her teammates, and the Ice Palace crowd, which roared as loudly for her as it did for NHL luminaries like Rod Gilbert and Daryl Sittler. Granato joined in on the game's traditional Harlem Globetrotter-ish hi-jinks, and even scored on NHL Heroes goalie Darren Pang -- albeit in television cahoots.
"We were both wearing microphones so we could hear each other talk," Granato said. "And he saved on me twice, and I said if I don't score, I won't sleep tonight. And then of course I scored."
The invitation to participate in the NHL's All-Star Saturday celebration demonstrates how far Granato in particular, and women's hockey in general, has come since the U.S. triumph in February 1998 in Nagano. As the women's team captain, Granato remains its most enduring symbol. Doubters should open the February issue of Better Homes & Gardens, if they require proof. They'll see Granato in four-color commercial splendor, just inside the cover.
"Oh, the Chevrolet ad," she said, almost self-conscious.
It likely doesn't hurt to have a brother who's still an active NHL player -- Tony, who's with the San Jose Sharks. But the year-long publicity boom is of Cammi and her Olympic teammates' making. She even had her own Ice Palace dressing room Saturday night, identifiable in NHL signage around the corner from the North American All-Stars.
"She can play," said former NHL standout Dave Maloney, who participated on the Sunbelt Heroes team. "That's the thing."
Maloney, who coaches youth-league hockey in his spare time in Greenwich, Conn., offers further proof. Of the 300 kids participating in his own kids' league, he estimates that 100 are girls. And he's especially proud of one of the girls he coaches on his Pee-Wee team of 12- and 13-year-olds -- Nina Daughtery, whom he calls one of his best players. Maloney also noticed the female players' reaction when Granato's Olympic teammate, Sue Merz, appeared last year at a clinic for the Greenwich youth league.
"Cammi and Sue are to those girls what Dave Keon and Bobby Orr were to me growing up," Maloney said, calling the gold-medal Olympians first-generation trailblazers.
Granato agrees.
"Everything has changed since February 17 [1998]," she said. "Except who I am and what kind of person I am. The greatest thing is what it's done for women's sports, and that our sport has gotten the kind of recognition and attention that it has."
Women's hockey still lacks a professional league, however, and Granato, who aims to participate in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, is momentarily confined to here-and-there international tournaments. She's looking forward to the women's world championships in March in Helsinki, Finland, and admits that the lack of games frustrates both her, and her past and hopefully-future Olympic teammates.
"We were on e-mail all summer complaining about it," said Granato, who finds herself alone on the ice doing sprints these days, hitting the weight room afterward as often as she can.
Gone are the 50-game preparation schedules, and the Olympic financial backing. She's lucky sometimes to find somebody to pass pucks to her in solitary practices, plus she's also taken the full-time responsibility of doing radio color commentary for the Los Angles Kings in return for ice time with Kings coaches and injured players, a job that she's learning to like.
Granato's veteran play-by-play sidekick is Nick Nixon. And for now she'll only grimace and laugh, and say that she's doing better, and that it's a three-year contract, and she wants to improve. She's also juggling broadcasting with too-many-to-count promotional and appearance obligations, but wouldn't change a thing.
That's why, in a non-Olympic year, Saturday's Ice Palace ovation was so warmly received.
"I kept thinking, 'Why me?'" Granato said, grinning. "It was so nice to have somebody in the stands besides your boyfriend and your parents."
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