Cammi Granato on Canucks' path to contention: "It's not gonna happen overnight"
For Vancouver Canucks assistant general manager Cammi Granato, her career has often carried one particular word next to her accomplishments: first.
Granato was the captain of the first-ever women’s hockey team to win an Olympic gold medal in 1998 with USA, the first woman inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame (along with Canada’s Angela James) in 2010, and the first woman to become a pro scout in the NHL when she joined the Seattle Kraken back in 2019 in preparation for their expansion into the league.
And when Granato was hired by Vancouver in February 2022, she joined former agent Émilie Castonguay (as well as Derek Clancey) as one of the team’s three assistant general managers, and became part of the first-ever NHL front office to have two female assistant GMs.
“It was something that I could never say no to,” Granato said in an exclusive interview with Daily Hive about joining the Canucks. “When the opportunity came to me, it was something I knew I couldn’t pass up. I felt like my experience with [Seattle] had been really great up until that point, and was really enjoying being in an NHL role. For a woman in a sport where you were always sort of trying to prove yourself all the time, I just didn’t think there was that much opportunity in the NHL to get hired.”
Granato now oversees the team’s scouting department, though she admits it’s not the only corner of the franchise she deals with.
“When you’re in a management position, everything in the organization sort of comes across your office, because every different branch of the organization kind of sifts up to that,” Granato said. “It’s not a low-pressure job at all, but it’s exciting.”
When she’s at home in Vancouver, most workdays start the same: an alarm around 7 am, and then, well, coordinating parenting duties with husband Ray Ferraro for her two sons before her arrival at the rink around 9:15.
“I honestly feel like it’s a sprint some mornings in the morning to get to work, but I think a lot of people feel that way anyway,” Granato said. “I have to get my kids out the door and off to school before I get going. So it’s either arranging the carpools and who’s doing what, getting kids ready, and dealing with my dog.”
But once Granato’s at the office, well, it’s hardly ever typical.
“You never know what to expect, actually,” Granato added. “There’s the regular things you do. For me, [it’s running] the scouting department, player development stuff or checking the scouting reports. But there’s always other things that happen whether there’s an injury that you got to discuss or something with the salary cap. Or if you’re getting closer to the trade deadline, or you’re getting closer to some sort of deadline, there’s talk about that.”
Management, of course, has been a fickle thing to Canucks fans over the last decade or so.
The team has finished fifth or worse in the Pacific Division in six of the last seven seasons, with a lengthy list of long-term contracts and draft picks that most fans would probably like a do-over on. A long-promised rebuild never really came to fruition, with the team’s only playoff appearance since 2015 coming back in the 2019-20 season.
Push came to shove in December of last year, with the Canucks replacing nearly all the major players in their management team, most notably firing longtime GM and coach combo Jim Benning and Travis Green.
“I’ve lived in Vancouver for 20 years, so I do know the market well,” Granato said. “I know how passionate everybody is and how much they really want to win and, and knowing that… we’re obviously trying to build a championship team.”
Granato admits that despite some success last season (a .649 points percentage in Bruce Boudreau’s 57 games behind the bench), there’s still plenty of work to be done before it’s possible to call the Canucks a contender.
“Right now, it’s implementing our vision. And that takes a little while. It’s not gonna happen overnight, because you have a vision but then you have to carry it out,” Granato added. “It’s not something that you just can snap your fingers and then all of a sudden you’re like, ‘okay, well, we’re ready to win a championship.’ I feel like we’re kind of going in the right direction with our vision and I’m really excited to be a part of that whole organization.”
Granato’s first offseason with the Canucks has also offered her the chance to give back via the Cammi Granato Showcase Series of girls’ hockey tournaments, the most recent of which came at Toronto’s Canlan Ice Sports rink through the Canlan Classic Tournaments brand.
“There was no ‘women’s hockey’ when I was younger,” Granato said. “I played with the boys all the way till it was in college at 18… It’s so important for young girls to have opportunity. It was a no-brainer for me [to be involved with this tournament series].”
Since 2021, Granato has hosted similar events in Chicago, with plans to make the showcase an annual event, as well as an adding an event in Vancouver. Her next tournament is in Chicago this coming fall from November 25-27.
“There’s hundreds of girls with confidence just walking through the lobbies [of the arena],” she said. “And I was just like, ‘this is so great to see that change from when I was younger.'”
Granato added that there’s a much clearer path to high-level success in the women’s game than there was in her playing days.
“It’s just having the same opportunities for women in the sport that the boys have,” Granato said. “And I think we’re there in some ways, but I think as you move up into the higher levels, there’s a big debate about well, when people don’t watch women’s sports.
“That’s sort of being shattered — that view is being shattered — now and it’s being proven that millions of people actually watch women’s sports and people show up to to games and sellout crowds and so I think those things are really important.”
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