SOCHI, Russia — Before she was killed on a lonely stretch of highway, the little girl of an NHL star had a dream. She was the daughter of former Avalanche center Pierre Turgeon, and her fondest wish was to leap over the boards and take the ice for the U.S. hockey team at the Winter Olympics.

The wish came true Saturday, more than three years after Liz Turgeon died in a car accident.

“I seriously felt like I could hear her voice when we got on the ice. And she was bouncing off the walls, so excited to be at the Olympics,” U.S. forward Lyndsey Fry told me. Fry reached for a necklace tucked under her blue team jersey and revealed a silver locket containing a cherished photo of Liz Turgeon, her best friend in hockey. “There’s a little picture of us together in the locket. I open it right before it’s time to play. And, honestly, I only wear this necklace during games.”

Prior to a 3-1 victory against Finland in the tournament opener for Team USA, Fry gently held the locket in her hand and uttered these words: “I love you, Liz. Let’s get after it.”

As a young child, Fry fell in love with hockey through a movie, “The Mighty Ducks.” As a teenager from the Arizona desert, Fry regularly traveled all the way across the Rocky Mountains to play on a select hockey team in Colorado. Her hosts in Denver, who often housed Fry for two weeks per month and treated her like one of their own children, were Pierre and Elisabeth Turgeon.

In 2010, Fry went off to college at Harvard. Turgeon enrolled at Minnesota. The two young women vowed they would be teammates again, in Russia, where they would skate for the red, white and blue at the Olympics.

Two days before Christmas 2010, however, Turgeon was killed when the vehicle she was driving collided with a semi-truck on a fog-shrouded night in New Mexico. “I was 18 when it happened, and my world was turned upside down,” Fry said. “I was angry. I was frustrated. For the first couple months, I felt like if I wasn’t crying, I was doing something wrong.”

Ultimately, the only good way Fry discovered to deal with the pain was to play hockey for two. Chase the Olympic dream on behalf of Liz, whose No. 23 jersey from the under-18 national team travels everywhere with Fry in her equipment bag. During the past three years, Fry has also made regular trips to Colorado, strengthening her bond with the Turgeon family.

Team USA arrived in Sochi to win a gold medal.

Fry brought along a friend to Russia, with love, stored in a locket next to her heart.