While little details from the Olympic Winter Games Nagano 1998 may fade with time, Granato said, only to come back when she and her teammates get together and reminisce, other memories will stay with her forever. First, the feeling when the final buzzer sounded and the celebration on the ice. Then, the medal ceremony. Then the gold-medal game itself, a 3-1 victory over archrival Canada, and the massive attention that followed once they returned home.

“That’s something to note is we came from virtually nowhere to being in the Olympics on the world stage, and then we won the gold medal,” Granato said. “I’m not sure how many other medalists there were that year, but we were a big focus and people wanted to hear from us.

“We were flying all over the corporate world giving speeches, going on the ‘Today’ show, going on David Letterman. … We were like, ‘What is happening?’” she continued. “Two weeks before the pre-Olympic tour we were playing in colleges in front of a handful of fans and friends, people we knew.

“Then we were cast into this place where it hit us that wow, people actually care. It was neat to see the country embrace the win and appreciate us.”

Granato went on to win an Olympic silver medal in 2002 and ended her record-setting career as the all-time leading scorer for Team USA with 343 points.

In 2010, Granato was one of the first two women inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. The 1998 team was inducted into the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Hall of Fame in 2019. And current figures put women’s participation in hockey in the U.S. at 88,000.

Granato is once again breaking ground for women in the sport in a very visible way. She became the first woman to work as a pro scout in the NHL when the Seattle Kraken hired her in 2019 — there are now a handful more — then in February 2022 she joined the Vancouver Canucks as an assistant GM, becoming just the third woman to hold that position.

It’s been slow, incremental growth toward greater acceptance, and Granato even to this day hears the occasional rumblings from people questioning her ability to do her job based on her gender.

“When someone says something trying to get a rise out of me, I’m like, ‘You think I haven’t heard this before?’” she said.

But with social media, young girls can now follow their favorite players and role models in ways that didn’t exist when Granato first played in the Olympics. There are more television and streaming opportunities of national team games, women’s professional games and major international tournaments. It’s all progress, even if it is slow.

Members of the 1998 team stay in touch now more than they did in the years immediately following the Games, Granato said, thanks to group chat. They’re planning their first reunion since the 20th anniversary for later this year.

“I’d always wondered how it would feel, watching all these different championships and just being intrigued by the celebrations,” she said. “When we were able to do that, to have such a big moment like my heroes from the 1980 Miracle on Ice team, to do that was so surreal.

“That never leaves you.”

25 YEARS AFTER HISTORIC NAGANO GOLD, CAMMI GRANATO CONTINUES BREAKING GROUND

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