Angela Ruggiero

Join Emmy-winning broadcaster Tina Cervasio as she talks to hockey great Angela Ruggiero today on Spreecast!

Tune in to SPREECAST (here) at 12pm on Wednesday, January 25 and join in the conversation!

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EspnW -By Bonnie D. Ford

Veteran defenseman Angela Ruggiero showed up at the U.S. women’s hockey team camp in Blaine, Minn., on Wednesday without her gear — a first in her 16-year career. Instead, she carried 10 typed pages of prepared remarks. She didn’t want to wing it and risk forgetting something important.

Ruggiero was still rehabbing from shoulder surgery and wasn’t supposed to be there at all, so her teammates stared at her quizzically when she walked into the locker room. She asked them to gather and told them she was retiring, effective immediately. And then, methodical yet passionate as always, she began spelling out the lessons of a lifetime in the game.

Her teammates hugged her when she was done. She told them they would have more time to talk later. Then the players spilled out on the ice to scrimmage and Ruggiero stayed behind in her street clothes, drained and uplifted.

“Right now, I’m standing behind the glass, and I guess that’s a metaphor for how my life will be going forward,” Ruggiero said by telephone Wednesday night. “It feels right. But it’s emotional. Saying goodbye to anything you’ve done that long is hard.”

Here’s the first and, in some ways, the only thing you need to know about Ruggiero: She is smart and driven and talented enough to have done practically anything with her life, but she chose to play hockey. In so doing, she has enriched her sport and the experience of many of the women who shared the ice with her.

Ruggiero’s retirement from the national team comes as she is about to turn 32, after 256 games, four World Championships and four Olympic medals. She should be a shoo-in to join her former teammate Cammi Granato in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

After 16 years, Angela Ruggiero played more games than any other Team USA player (256) and finished with 67 goals and 141 assists for 208 career points. (John David Mercer/US Presswire)”][/caption]

Even amid the scrum of well-educated, articulate women who play at the game’s top level in this country, Ruggiero stood out as one of the sharpest knives in the drawer, a go-to player for reporters who wanted big-picture analysis or an X-and-O breakdown. She was generous, humble, straightforward, steely and dependable. Add leadership ability as obvious as the flashing light behind the net, and it’s easy to understand her longevity. (read more)

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Sports Illustrated

Hockey great Angela Ruggiero named to SportsIllustrated.com’s list of Top 100 Most Influential Twitter Handles in Sports (@angelaruggiero)

As we mark Twitter’s fifth anniversary (July 15), it’s a good time to acknowledge the social media site’s influence on the sports landscape. Every NBA, MLB, NHL and NFL franchise has a Twitter presence and its impact on news has been profound, as SI.com’s Jon Wertheim reports in this story. With social networking growing at a rapid pace, the writers and editors at SI.com decided to put together a package on the most influential twitter handles in the world of sports for Twitter’s fifth anniversary.

The first annual Twitter 100 is the result of a month-long conversation about the best people to follow in sports. For SI.com’s inaugural Twitter 100, we polled more than 50 Sports Illustrated staffers — from reporters to writers to editors — who are hard-core Twitter users and asked them which feeds they considered essential to their daily routine for finding news, information and entertainment from the sports world. We gave them one guideline: You could not choose anyone associated with SI. After weeks of debating the endless possibilities, we’ve whittled down the list to our top 100, which we present in alphabetical order. The list covers a variety of sports and includes a diverse group of interesting feeds: SI.com The Twitter Top 100

An IOC member, Harvard graduate and one of the greatest women’s hockey players ever, Angela Ruggiero has been named to this select list. Follow Angela on Twitter @angelaruggiero

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She Shoots, But Will She Score?
In Olympic Role, Women’s Hockey Star Aims to Bring Games Back to U.S.

The Wall Street Journal

The President couldn’t bring Olympics back to the U.S.; Maybe Angela Ruggiero can.

A 31-year-old Californian once fired by Donald Trump during a reality-television apprenticeship, Ruggiero is one of the best female hockey players ever. As a member of the U.S. Olympic team, she’s medaled in the last four Winter Games. As part of her bid to make it to a fifth Games, she helped Team USA win the 2011 world championship in Switzerland last month, beating arch-rival Canada 3-2 in overtime in the finals.

Ruggiero has built a reputation as an unmovable force on the American blue line. But for the U.S. Olympic movement, her biggest victory could come in the more delicate art of diplomacy in the years ahead. She was chosen last year by her fellow competitors as one of 12 elected members on the International Olympic Committee’s athlete’s commission, a highly influential post rarely occupied by Americans. The eight-year appointment also makers her an IOC member. (read more)