Tampa, Fla.
Think of how unlikely this is: A Denver-area native is the No. 1 goaltender for the defending Stanley Cup champions.
“It’s an honor that I’ve been waiting for, and that I’m ready for,” John Grahame said in the Tampa Bay Lightning’s dressing room at the St. Pete Times Forum.
In some ways, the NHL has been waiting for Grahame, too. Waiting for the eldest son in Denver hockey’s first family to mature. Waiting for Grahame, who went to Aurora’s Overland High School, to translate his competitiveness and indisputable talent into a vise-like grip on a No. 1 spot.
Grahame’s odyssey took him to Sioux City, Iowa, for junior hockey; to Lake Superior State for a three-season career; to the Bruins organization for impressive yet frustrating stints with Boston and minor-league Providence; and then to Tampa after he was traded to the Lightning in January 2003.
At age 30, Grahame – who was in the net for the Lightning’s 3-2 shootout exhibition loss to Buffalo on Sunday – has been anointed the Lightning’s regular in the wake of Nikolai Khabibulin’s signing with Chicago. Tampa Bay also has veteran Sean Burke, but Lightning general manager Jay Feaster and coach John Tortorella have forcefully told Grahame it is his job to lose.
In fact, at one point in the Lightning’s Stanley Cup season, Tortorella was exasperated with the sphinx-like Khabibulin.
“Johnny has been spitting bullets at me since he’s been here because he thinks he should be playing more,” Tortorella said. “We had decided he was ready to take over the No. 1 spot. Then he screwed up.”
Grahame missed a team flight.
“That was unacceptable,” Tortorella said.
The faux pas was top secret at the time, but now Tortorella brings it up, almost as if getting it on the record is part of the don’t-foul-up-this-time challenge to Grahame.
Khabibulin remained the No. 1 during the Lightning’s run to the championship. Yet the Lightning’s regard for Grahame left the team unwilling to commit an inordinate cut of its payroll to Khabibulin, and the Blackhawks signed the Russian.
“I knew it was going to be difficult to sign everybody,” Grahame said. “I prepared for it that way in the summer, coming in in the best shape I could be in, ready to take on the responsibility of playing night in and night out.”
Tortorella and Feaster gush about Grahame’s conditioning and how he has seemed to respond to being told to, in effect, step up or maybe not get another chance.
Has Grahame matured?
“I think mentally,” he said. “I think physically, it’s the same. I’m a little more fine-tuned in my game. In the past, I was a little more wild, a little aggressive back then, jumping around and not being as patient.”
Tortorella said he doesn’t want the goalie “to lose his personality because I think he is a very special person. You need some wing nuts in your locker room to make it work. I don’t want him to lose that. But some of the things you did as a 22-, 23-year-old were funny. Now, as a 30-year-old, they’re not so funny. This is a big opportunity for him, and I think he’s beginning to change his mind-set about exactly what he has to do to be a No. 1.”
Grahame already has made history. John and his mother, Charlotte, the Avalanche’s senior director of hockey administration, are the only son and mother to have their names on the Stanley Cup. “It’s a little bit of history and it’s a great honor the Avalanche did for my mom,” John said.
The family has made its mark on Denver hockey for decades, since John’s father, Ron, played at DU before moving on to the World Hockey Association and NHL. Ron is DU’s associate athletic director, and another Grahame son, Jason, had a solid four-season career as a Pioneers defenseman.
The race is on to see which Grahame – mother or son – gets a second mention on the most famous trophy in professional sports.
Staff writer Terry Frei can be reached at 303-820-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
