Tony Granato is 44 years old, one year older than a player who participated in his first NHL game in nearly six years Tuesday night — Claude Lemieux.
So, when can we expect Granato to be known as the Avalanche’s “player-coach?”
“No,” said Granato, only the way he said it made the word sound like “new.” “Those days are gone.”
Still, Granato said the yearning that Lemieux had to make a comeback happens to every player not long after they retire. Unlike most of them, Lemieux actually made it.
“I’ve got a lot of admiration for Claude Lemieux. That’s tough, what he did,” Granato said. “When you shut down the body, when you’re done playing, and start it up again like he’s been able to do — it’s pretty impressive. But all retired players, after a few months, they say, ‘Geez, you know, maybe I should do this.’ And then you think about it, and the mental preparation and the effort that it would take to get back into shape to do it, it’s tough. I wish him well.”
Lemieux, the former Avalanche right wing who helped win Denver’s first major pro sports championship in 1996, last played for the Dallas Stars in 2003. After unfulfilling stints in the front office of a minor-league hockey team and running an instructional school in the Phoenix area, he became inspired by Lance Armstrong’s cycling comeback and thought, “Why not me, too?”
Just about everybody openly scoffed at Lemieux’s chances of playing in the NHL again. But he lost 25 pounds, accepted what were basically just tryout offers with a Chinese hockey team and the Worcester (Mass.) Sharks of the AHL, and showed enough of his old self in games to warrant a call-up Monday by the San Jose Sharks.
Next Tuesday at the Pepsi Center, in the first game after the all-star break, there is a great chance Lemieux will play against his old team.
“I think the way he did it, to go away from the family and go to the minors and just focus for that period of time, I think he did it the right way,” Granato said. “I think that’s the only way you can do it.”
Some are already calling Lemieux’s call-up a cheap publicity stunt by the Sharks, and that he’ll be sent back to the minors or cut outright during the all-star break.
Lemieux clearly isn’t thinking that. He sent yours truly a text message late Monday that read, “See you in Denver next week.”
Who would have thunk it?
