By Mark Gregory
Sports Editor
@Hear_The_Beard
mark@buglenewspapers.com
In July of last year, Downers Grove native Tony Granato got a call from Jim Johannson, a friend and USA Hockey’s assistant executive director of hockey operations and general manager of the 2018 U.S. Olympic Men’s Ice Hockey Team, to tell him he was selected as the head coach of the team that will open play Feb. 14 against Slovenia in PyeongChang, South Korea.
The pair looked forward to challenging for a gold medal – together.
Unfortunately, Johannson died unexpectedly in his sleep on Jan. 21. He was 53.
“This obviously put a big black cloud over getting ready because this was Jimmy’s project, this was Jimmy’s team. This is something he built and not only was he our leader, but he is our friend that we wanted so much to share this experience with,” said Granato, who was a teammate of Johannson’s on the 1988 Olympic team. “I hate using let’s win one for someone else. We are so inspired for so many different reasons and he will be there with us in spirit and thought and in every decision we make we will think of Jimmy and what he would do and how he would want us to do it. That itself is inspiring enough.
“It is our goal – and it always has been – to come home with gold medal. Does this make it easier or harder or different? I don’t know that. All I know is we will go there inspired to make Jimmy proud and be the best that we can be. He created this for us to win. He put us in a position with all the work he did to be ready for this and we have to focus on doing just that. I would love to represent him in a way he expected us to and make him proud.”
The team Johannson built and Granato will coach is the first team in 20 years that will not feature players currently in the National Hockey League.
“This is an opportunity for players, who are great players, to be on the Olympic stage that they didn’t think they would ever have. That opportunity is really exciting,” Granato said. “There is more pure Olympic feel for this. I am not at all criticizing the way it has been done the last five Olympics. There was nothing better than to have Patrick Kane and Joe Pavelski and Jonathan Quick and Sidney Crosby playing with and against each other. That was center stage for our game and it showed our best athletes, but I also think there is a purity to the Olympics that when you get there, you are at the peak of your career. That is your first opportunity for a world stage and that is different. In 1980 and ’84 and ’88 and ’92 – all the players that played in that, no one knew and they were building to get that opportunity. This is somewhat that same feeling. As Jimmy said, there are 25 stories that are ready to be heard. When the stars go, it is a phenomenal event, but I think this has the potential to be more exciting. A lot of the uncertainties, a lot of unknowns and a lot of chances for athletes to take advantage of the Olympic moment and make a career of it.”
Granato made a career out of his Olympic opportunity, as he skated for three different teams over a 13-year NHL career.
He began his run with the New York Rangers (1988-90), then spent six years with the Los Angeles Kings (1990-96) before finishing his career with the San Jose Sharks (1996-01) where he was an All-Star during the 1996-97 season.
Granato know the Olympics were a big part of his story as a player and he looks forward to the stories of this year’s team coming out.
“When I turn on the Olympics and I watch skiing or bobsled or gymnastics, I don’t know who they are until I watch them and then I watch the stories and then you get hooked on falling in love with a new hero. That is more of what the Olympic spirit was and maybe still was throughout the NHL days, but I think this is an exciting time for the fans, but also for the players and the participants. I really do think the fans will appreciate and enjoy it as much as they did with the NHL players.”
The purity of the Olympics was one of the things that made Granato set his sights on playing at the highest levels of the sport, in particular, the 1980 ‘Miracle on Ice’ team.
“We were in Downers in the basement and we would be Stan Mikita and Bonny Hull and Tony Esposito and Pit Martin and all those guys. But when the U.S. team won, half of the time we would be Mike Eruzione, Mark Johnson and Jim Craig and half the time we would be Stan and Bobby and Tony,” Granato said. “There was all of a sudden a new group of heroes, new inspiring thing for a young hockey player to see. I was 15 when it happened. I didn’t know anything about the Olympics or even anything about college hockey and then I see 20 college kids wearing U.S.A. sweaters and that was a big moment for me as far as giving myself heroes and inspirational challenges to try and make it to the best level of hockey. Then I had a chance eight years later to be on an Olympic team. Those are the guys that set the tone for USA hockey. They jump-started the development, jump-started opportunities for Americans to be respected professionally and internationally. Those guys were a great team to learn from for our team – I didn’t know Mike Eruzione, Jim Craig, Neal Broten, Jack O’Callahan, but within two or three days after the start of the Olympics, I knew their name, their number, where they came from; I think that is how it was when I was a kid and how the Olympics were.”
After retiring as a player, Granato stayed around the NHL.
He was an assistant coach and head coach for the Colorado Avalanche (2002-2009), Pittsburgh Penguins (2009-14) and Detroit Red Wings (2014-16).
With the Penguins, Granato helped lead the team to four consecutive playoff appearances from 2009-2014. Granato’s duties with the team included oversight of all forwards, a group he directed to an NHL-best 3.38 goal-per-game average during the 2012-13 season.
In 215 games as head coach of the Avalanche, Granato recorded 104 wins, two playoff appearances and a Northwest Division title (2002-03). He is now the current head coach the University of Wisconsin-Madison, of his alma mater.
He served as an assistant coach on the 2014 Olympic team, that fell to Finland in the bronze medal game, before being chosen as the 2018 head coach
“I know I can’t play anymore, so the next best thing is to coach. Jimmy in the last month was able to call all 25 players, 23 of them on January 1, to tell them that they were part of the Olympic team and he said that was one of the greatest thing he ever did in his life was to tell kids, ‘Hey, you are on the Olympic team.’ The feeling he got and the emotions attached with that with the athletes hearing that are one of the best feelings ever on both ends of that call,” Granato said. “Well, Jimmy made that call to me last. July telling I was selected to be the coach of the team and I felt the same way those athletes did. It is an honor. There is no greater feeling and sense of pride than to be able to represent your country and be part of an Olympic team, so it ranks up there with anything. I would love to say that I could still play, because nothing can replace playing in the Olympics, but to have the opportunity to go back and be part of another staff and be able to be part of the process of putting the team together to try and do something special is as good as it gets.”
Granato is not the only member of the Team USA staff to have ties to the Chicagoland area.
One of his assistants, is four-time Olympian and NHL Hall-of-Famer Chris Chelios, who was grew up in Chicago and played for the Chicago Blackhawks from 1990-99.
“He has turned a ton of his attention now to coaching and development and to have him on the staff makes it a heck of a lot more comfortable going into the Olympics. We have a great staff with Scott Young, who played in four Olympics and has worn the USA sweater for many years, Keith Allain, who has been part of a ton of American staffs to go along with Ron Rolston, so our staff has tons of experience internationally,” Granato said. “Chris is as big of a competitor as anyone that ever wore a jersey. His experience team being a player on four Olympic teams and being a captain of all of them, he is USA Hockey. There is no better person to have on the bench next to you than Chris Chelios.”