Cammi Granato: American Beauty

"When you think women's hockey, you think Cammi Granato. She's one of the pioneers. The one who opened the doors. So many little girls wanted to be Cammi Granato."

-- Mike Eruzione, captain of 1980 Miracle on Ice team

If Cammi Granato was not the best female hockey player ever, then she was almost certainly the most recognizable.

When women's hockey took to the main stage of the 1998 Olympic games, Granato was fawned over as the sister of NHL role player Tony Granato. By the end of the Olympics everyone recognized Cammi as the best American female player, if not the best in the world.

By the time her career ended, she was women's hockey's all time leading scorer, tallying 54 goals and 96 points in 54 international games. Her trophy case included 1 Olympic gold and 1 silver, as well as 1 World Championship gold and 8 silver.

In 2007 she was honoured with the NHL’s Lester Patrick Award for outstanding service to hockey in the U.S. She was inducted into the International Ice Hockey Federation's Hall of Fame in 2008. And now in 2010 she joins Angela James as the first women inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Read the full Hall of Fame story of Cammi Granato.

Hall of Fame Quips

"The Hockey Hall of Fame was made for legends. It was a place you go to visit to see the legends of hockey, your idols. To know you are being inducted into that club is just hard to wrap your head around. It gives me chills to think about it."

- Cammi Granato

"I sit back and think 'Why is this happening to me? I'm just a kid from the projects. I'm just a goof. That's what I tell my friends. They say 'You're not a goof' and I say 'I'm a goof.'

- Angela James

"It would've been nice to get the call was 2006 when my dad (Vic) was dying of cancer. I would've liked him to know. But he told me before he died, he was proud of me, proud of my career. My mom (Celeste) died this year too, before I got the call. It wasn't God's will, but I know they'll have the two best seats in the house for it."

- Dino Ciccarelli

Hull, Richter, Leetch, Granato Honored Tonight

The United States Hockey Hall of Fame is welcoming four new enshrinees tonight. As Terry Frei writes, it is a class all it's own.

Brett Hull, Mike Richter, Brian Leetch and Cammi Granato are all honored tonight

It must be an especially proud night for the Granato family, as their daughter/sister is the first woman inducted into the USHHOF. As Rick Sadowski writes, the Granatos are hockey aristocracy.