If males’s basketball is the U.S.’s hottest and professional-filled staff sport on the Summer time Olympic Video games, then males’s ice hockey is its Winter Olympics analogue. Each 4 years, the two-week Summer time and Winter Olympics present a respite, for NBA and NHL followers, from the annual home calendar. Stars who would possibly usually be teammates as a substitute decide up the jerseys of rival nations, competing towards each other for love of residence and fireside on the world’s grandest sporting stage. Every Olympic sport has had its iconic American triumphs too: Who can overlook the 1992 basketball “Dream Crew” in Barcelona, or the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” in Lake Placid?
However there’s one main distinction. The US has dominated males’s basketball on the Summer time Video games, solely as soon as failing to win gold since NBA gamers have been first allowed to compete, in 1992. However in males’s ice hockey, the U.S. hadn’t received gold because the 1980 miracle — and never as soon as since NHL gamers first competed, in 1998. Basketball, like baseball (which can return as an Olympic sport in Los Angeles in 2028), is an American invention. Not so for hockey: The bruising tough-guy recreation is Canadian in origin, and Canada is the winningest staff in Olympic historical past. This yr’s Canadian hockey staff was touted by some as the best staff ever assembled on ice.
But, in one of many extra extraordinary fixtures in current sporting reminiscence, the USA upset mighty Canada in Italy on Sunday to seize the Olympic gold medal in males’s ice hockey. It was a wildly entertaining affair — a bitterly contested 2-1 overtime thriller, marked by intense ardour from either side and an all-time historic efficiency from American netminder Connor Hellebuyck. It was a gritty upset victory over a foe extensively thought-about extra gifted, made attainable via dedication and sheer power of will. The viral photograph of golden-goal-scoring ahead Jack Hughes, smiling extensively with two tooth lacking and an American flag draped round his shoulder, immediately entered the realm of American sporting lore.
Arguably much more spectacular than the victory itself, although, was the best way the American staff dealt with the aftermath. And right here, some extra context is important.
For greater than a decade, the sports activities institution has more and more embraced the left. The development was crystallized when, in 2015, ESPN awarded Caitlyn Jenner the Arthur Ashe Braveness Award — not for being an Olympic gold medalist, however for publicly transitioning to determine as a lady. Different sports activities media similar to Dave Portnoy’s Barstool Sports activities and Clay Travis’ OutKick seized on the apparent market share void, however a lot of the sports activities institution nonetheless leans leftward. On the Australian Open tennis match in January, American stars deftly swatted away obnoxious questions from tendentious anti-Trump sports activities journalists. Earlier within the Milan Cortina Video games, some American athletes sadly succumbed to comparable journalistic activism; freestyle skier Chris Lillis, for instance, stated he was “heartbroken” in regards to the political scenario at residence.
The golden American hockey males had no real interest in taking part in this recreation.
FBI Director Kash Patel, a lifelong leisure hockey participant and fan who was in attendance, joined the boys’s staff within the locker room afterward to have fun. Patel was capable of get President Trump on speakerphone, and the president congratulated the staff for a hard-fought and well-earned victory. He invited the staff to attend Tuesday’s State of the Union deal with in Washington. The gamers instantly accepted, and, in a viral video of the interplay, they appeared genuinely grateful for the cellphone name. However in a slew of predictable subsequent interviews, quite a few journalists requested the gamers whether or not they have been involved in any respect about showing alongside such a divisive president. In each occasion, the gamers refused to take the bait.
Golden boy Hughes encapsulated this sobriety in Miami on Monday: “Every part is so political. We’re athletes. We’re so proud to characterize the U.S. While you get the possibility to go to White Home and meet the president, we’re proud to be People.” Jack’s brother Quinn Hughes, additionally on Crew USA, even thanked the military for the victory over Canada: “It’s so particular, and I wish to thank our troops for permitting us to play this recreation.” Two-time Stanley Cup winner Matthew Tkachuk offered a similar sentiment when requested about Trump’s locker room name: “It’s an honor listening to from the president of the USA.… We’re positively honored to characterize him and the lots of of thousands and thousands throughout the nation and to convey a gold medal again.”
How unbelievably refreshing all of it is.
Sports activities, at its best, can act as a cultural frequent denominator for our ever-fractious and divided polity. For a very long time, it appeared as if that may have been written off as nostalgia and without end misplaced to historical past. However maybe not. As many famous, the immediately iconic photograph of Hughes appears and looks like a throwback to a bygone period. The gold-medal-winning 2026 U.S. Olympic males’s ice hockey staff will encourage a complete technology of American hockey gamers, but when they might help us get well sports activities as a uncommon cultural totem that we share, and never one more wedge driving us aside, they may make a good larger contribution to the well being of the nation they very clearly love.
Josh Hammer’s newest ebook is “Israel and Civilization: The Destiny of the Jewish Nation and the Future of the West.” This text was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. X: @josh_hammer
