Angela Ruggiero happy to be a part of defense-heavy Hockey Hall of Fame class

The 416 number called three times. Angela Ruggiero recognized that the area code was originating from Toronto but she was busy in her San Francisco hotel room preparing for a U.S. Olympic Committee board meeting and decided to wait for a voicemail.

Despite the trio of calls, no voicemail arrived, leaving Ruggiero confused. “[I] kept thinking, ‘Why won’t this person leave a message?’” she said.

The call was from the Hockey Hall of Fame trying to notify Ruggiero that she would be one of the inductees in the 2015 class.

It wasn’t until Kelly Masse, the Hall’s director of media relations, sent Ruggiero a text asking her to call back. “And then I thought, ‘Oh, my God, that’s the Hall of Fame calling!” said Ruggiero, who was unaware that the 2015 class was being announced that day.

On Monday night in Toronto, Ruggiero, along with Sergei Fedorov, Phil Housley, Nicklas Lidstrom, Chris Pronger, Bill Hay, and Peter Karmanos Jr. will enter the Hockey Hall of Fame. The former standout American defenseman will become the fourth woman inducted, joining Cammi Granato, Angela James and Geraldine Heaney.

Ruggiero will also be inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame in December.

What makes Ruggiero smile a bit more is that she’s one of four blueliners entering the Hall next week.

“Nothing against Sergei because he’s on the Athlete’s Commission with me with the IIHF, but being with all these great defensemen is cool,” she said. “For me, at least, obviously there’s so many amazing legends that came before, but our class, I think it’s extra special to me being the defensemen class.”

It wasn’t until 2010, while Ruggiero was still an active player, that Granato and James were given hockey’s highest individual honor. That was a key moment in moving the women’s game forward.

“It was a huge monumental step for the women’s game and for hockey in general,” Ruggiero said. “I think that they’re just demonstrating the openness and acceptance of this growing piece of hockey.”

Ruggiero was born in California and played on boys’ teams before moving to Michigan at age 16. There she would train with her brother, Bill, and eventually make the U.S. Olympic team for the first women’s tournament at 1998 Games in Nagano, Japan.

“The biggest thing is growing up I never dreamed of being in the Hall of Fame because that wasn’t a reality at the time,” she said. “Women’s hockey wasn’t declared an Olympic sport until I was 12, so that was my target. I wanted to play in the Olympics and wanted to go play in college.”

The U.S. would win gold over Canada in 1998, and that experience would help mold Ruggiero into the player she later became over the following three Olympics, where she would win two silvers and a bronze and be named top defenseman twice. She credits teammates Cammi Granato, Chris Bailey, Alana Blahoski and Sue Merz as the biggest influences on her career.

“Those four helped me when I was then the veteran of the team and had all these rookies,” she said. “Put myself in their shoes and recognized the importance of having more senior teammates and what a couple words here and there checking in once in a while how far that would go.”

Ruggiero would end her career in 2011 as one of the most decorated American players ever. With Team USA, she would win the four Olympic medals and four golds and six silvers at the IIHF World Championships. Collegiately she was a four-time NCAA All-American at Harvard and remains the only defenseman to win the Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award as the top women’s player.

During the 2006 Olympics Ruggiero was outspoken about the Canadian team running up the score against opponents, saying that such lopsided results could put the women’s game in jeopardy for future tournaments. Nearly a decade later the gap is slowly shrinking between the U.S. and Canada and the rest of the world, but there’s still more that needs to be done to continue growth.

“I think a lot of national federations need to step up to the plate and support their women’s teams,” Ruggiero said. “Ideally you would look at the traditionally dominant hockey countries like the U.S. and Canada, like Russia, like a lot of these European countries that have wonderful men’s teams should equally all have wonderful women’s teams; because what that signifies to me is that they have the history, the tradition, they understand the game. They can easily open up the doors and transfer that knowledge and put financial backing behind their women because that’s what it takes. That, to me, would really show that the sport is truly growing.

“If you look at somewhere like China, which doesn’t have a history of hockey, they still year after year are investing in the women’s game and trying to make it better, but it’s a lot harder for them to figure out to have strategic decisions on the ice because they don’t grow up with hockey like we did. That would be the best case. We are getting better, but the tricky thing is the U.S. and Canada is never going to stop improving, so the other players have to improve at the same rate, but even more to catch up.”

The women’s game in North American took another big step in strengthening itself with the NWHL dropping the puck this year. Ruggiero is happy with the league’s start so far and hopes the model developed by Dani Rylan is able to be sustainable long-term.

These days Ruggiero keeps herself busy on five different commissions within the International Olympic Committee, along with being part of the USOC board and the IIHF Athlete’s Commission. But she hasn’t closed the door on getting back involved in hockey.

“I think if the timing’s right, if the opportunity is there I would certainly love to get back into the women’s game more on the league side than the coaching side for now,” she said. “I had girls camps for years, I absolutely loved coaching the youth level, but coaching at the collegiate level is a whole different ballgame.”

Ruggiero’s time away from hockey has allowed her to get involved in a number of different ventures, but since it was announced she would be a Hockey Hall of Famer, the journey toward Monday’s induction ceremony — thinking about those who helped her along the way, reliving her career — has been a fun experience. She said she needed a break from hockey to be able to get away and retire, but the last five months have rekindled her memories of the game.

Once she’s inducted and her plaque goes up in the Great Hall at the corner of Front and Yonge Streets, Ruggiero will forever be a part of a special community in the hockey world.

“That, to me, is really one of the most special things about this, is recognizing that I’ve retired,” she said, “but there will be this place once a year that I’ll get to go to and relive being a player and be a part of this amazing group of fellow hockey players.”

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Sean Leahy is the associate editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Sean_Leahy

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