If men’s basketball is the U.S.’s most popular and professional-filled team sport at the Summer Olympic Games, then men’s ice hockey is its Winter Olympics analogue. Every four years, the two-week Summer and Winter Olympics provide a respite, for NBA and NHL fans, from the annual domestic calendar. Stars who might normally be teammates instead pick up the jerseys of rival nations, competing against one another for love of home and hearth on the world’s grandest sporting stage. Each Olympic sport has had its iconic American triumphs too: Who can forget the 1992 basketball “Dream Team” in Barcelona, or the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” in Lake Placid?
But there is one major difference. The United States has dominated men’s basketball at the Summer Games, only once failing to win gold since NBA players were first allowed to compete, in 1992. But in men’s ice hockey, the U.S. hadn’t won gold since the 1980 miracle — and not once since NHL players first competed, in 1998. Basketball, like baseball (which will return as an Olympic sport in Los Angeles in 2028), is an American invention. Not so for hockey: The bruising tough-guy game is Canadian in origin, and Canada is the winningest team in Olympic history. This year’s Canadian hockey team was touted by some as the greatest team ever assembled on ice.
Yet, in one of the more extraordinary fixtures in recent sporting memory, the United States upset mighty Canada in Italy on Sunday to capture the Olympic gold medal in men’s ice hockey. It was a wildly entertaining affair — a bitterly contested 2-1 overtime thriller, marked by intense passion from both sides and an all-time historic performance from American netminder Connor Hellebuyck. It was a gritty upset victory over a foe widely considered more talented, made possible through determination and sheer force of will. The viral photo of golden-goal-scoring forward Jack Hughes, smiling widely with two teeth missing and an American flag draped around his shoulder, instantly entered the realm of American sporting lore.
Arguably even more impressive than the victory itself, though, was the way the American team handled the aftermath. And here, some additional context is necessary.
For more than a decade, the sports establishment has increasingly embraced the left. The trend was crystallized when, in 2015, ESPN awarded Caitlyn Jenner the Arthur Ashe Courage Award — not for being an Olympic gold medalist, but for publicly transitioning to identify as a woman. Alternative sports media such as Dave Portnoy’s Barstool Sports and Clay Travis’ OutKick seized on the obvious market share void, but much of the sports establishment still leans leftward. At the Australian Open tennis tournament in January, American stars deftly swatted away obnoxious questions from tendentious anti-Trump sports journalists. Earlier in the Milan Cortina Games, some American athletes unfortunately succumbed to similar journalistic activism; freestyle skier Chris Lillis, for example, said he was “heartbroken” about the political situation at home.
The golden American hockey men had no interest in playing this game.
FBI Director Kash Patel, a lifelong recreational hockey player and fan who was in attendance, joined the men’s team in the locker room afterward to celebrate. Patel was able to get President Trump on speakerphone, and the president congratulated the team for a hard-fought and well-earned victory. He invited the team to attend Tuesday’s State of the Union address in Washington. The players immediately accepted, and, in a viral video of the interaction, they seemed genuinely grateful for the phone call. But in a slew of predictable subsequent interviews, a number of journalists asked the players whether they were concerned at all about appearing alongside such a divisive president. In each and every instance, the players refused to take the bait.
Golden boy Hughes encapsulated this sobriety in Miami on Monday: “Everything is so political. We’re athletes. We’re so proud to represent the U.S. When you get the chance to go to White House and meet the president, we’re proud to be Americans.” Jack’s brother Quinn Hughes, also on Team USA, even thanked the military for the victory over Canada: “It’s so special, and I want to thank our troops for allowing us to play this game.” Two-time Stanley Cup winner Matthew Tkachuk offered a similar sentiment when asked about Trump’s locker room call: “It’s an honor hearing from the president of the United States.… We’re definitely honored to represent him and the hundreds of millions across the country and to bring a gold medal back.”
How unbelievably refreshing it all is.
Sports, at its finest, can act as a cultural common denominator for our ever-fractious and divided polity. For a long time, it looked as if that might have been written off as nostalgia and forever lost to history. But perhaps not. As many noted, the instantly iconic photo of Hughes looks and feels like a throwback to a bygone era. The gold-medal-winning 2026 U.S. Olympic men’s ice hockey team will inspire an entire generation of American hockey players, but if they can help us recover sports as a rare cultural totem that we share, and not yet another wedge driving us apart, they will make an even greater contribution to the health of the country they very clearly love.
Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. X: @josh_hammer
