For John Grahame, a member of Team USA Hockey in the 2006 Winter Games held in Turin, Italy, Olympic pride is difficult to define.
During the 2006 Winter Games, Grahame was one of three goalies on the roster whom coach Peter Laviolette welcomed aboard, representing America. Of the six games Team USA skated, Grahame received the nod to start in goal in the opening contest with Team Latvia. It is also the only Team USA game in the Olympics to end in a tie, 3–3.
That one appearance wearing his Team USA sweater, representing his home country, is right at the top of the thrills he experienced during his 13 seasons playing professionally.
“It’s a different feeling, and hard for me to describe,” Grahame told The Epoch Times during a phone interview from his Denver home on Feb. 18.
“Patriotism comes to mind first. Playing in the Olympics is a special time of year. You’re not playing for a city or state but for your county. Suddenly, you have millions and millions of people in the United States rooting for you.”
Grahame won at the highest level in both the National Hockey League, winning the Stanley Cup in 2004 with the Tampa Bay Lightning, and five years earlier in the American Hockey League, while collecting a Calder Cup championship ring as a member of the 1999 Providence Bruins.
Performing under pressure wasn’t foreign to Grahame when considering joining Team USA. There was one season, 2008–2009, that Grahame ventured off to Russia and joined the Omsk Avangard for duty in the Kontinental Hockey League’s inaugural year.
Playing halfway around the world, in a league comprising, at the time, 24 franchises and venues in China, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia, Grahame had to be nimble enough to learn key words rapidly to better communicate with his teammates.
When Grahame’s name first surfaced as being considered for Olympic duty, he was the starting goalie for the Lightning. One season removed from drinking champagne from the Stanley Cup, then as a backup netminder, he could have easily excused himself from taking on the added practices and pressures that were waiting for Team USA on the international scene.
But Grahame embraced what he remembers as an honor: putting personal goals on hold in favor of a collective opportunity to wear the Red, White, and Blue.
“I can’t imagine anyone being considered for the Olympic team and not doing it, ” Grahame said.
“The opportunity is so prestigious. Sometimes, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to do what you have dreamed of. You have to lay it out on the line for your country.”
When Quinn Hughes scored at 3:27 into Wednesday’s overtime period to give Team USA a 2–1 victory over Team Sweden in the quarterfinal round, cheering in the Grahame household was as loud as any.
Grahame’s three sons, Lucas, Knox, and Colton, are following in their father’s hockey footsteps, with an interest in all levels of the game. Labeling the Olympics a “big event” in his home, Grahame explains that hockey is not the only sport followed closely. Trying to enjoy the greatness of all athletes is front and center.
“How can you not respect what the athletes accomplish? They put so much time into what they are striving for,” Grahame said.
For Grahame, who retired after the 2010–2011 season playing for the Colorado Avalanche’s AHL affiliate in Cleveland, the Lake Erie Monsters, the competitive edge that professional sports, and the Olympics in particular, presented has carried over into his transition into the business world.
As a co-founder of TriSearch, an international full-service talent acquisition firm, Grahame sees business through the same prism as hockey. Building relationships through recruitment takes teamwork, just as in hockey, where goalies, defensemen, and forwards work to keep the puck moving up ice.
“The respect factor can’t be underestimated,” Grahame said.
“Just like in Olympic play, the idea of needing to get something done and accomplishing that is a badge of honor. You trust your teammates’ integrity, and they'll show up for you.”
Grahame’s nine-year-old son, Lucas, is already engaged in a business that emphasizes teamwork.
With his parents’ assistance, Lucas created and oversees therinkdude.com. In designing and marketing hats, hoodies, and hockey stick wax, Lucas donates 20 percent of his sales to families in need of financial assistance so their children can have the proper equipment to play hockey.
Lucas Grahame’s sales beneficiary includes United Heroes League, an organization that works with military families, and affords kids the opportunity to play sports.
To grow in the Olympics or business, partnerships remain paramount. Grahame has taken the patriotic pride afforded him through his Olympic journey and has run with it for more than two decades.
Although there are no definitive win-loss records outside of hockey rinks, Grahame continues to score victories in the business world, just as those currently in Milano-Cortina do.
