She was in the middle of preparing for it when her cell phone rang. The speech.
It was shortly after 6 p.m. on a recent Thursday, and Angela Ruggiero was about to pursue an enormous challenge, somehow condensing a lifetime of gratitude into a 5-minute speech for Monday night's Hockey Hall of Fame induction in Toronto.
"I've been kind of skimming the different speeches, like Chris Chelios (2013), Mark Messier (2007) and Peter Forsberg (2014)," said Ruggiero, a four-time Olympic medalist for Team USA, who will become the fourth woman inducted. "When Cammi Granato got inducted a few years ago (2010), I was sad that I missed that historical dinner for her.