A few minutes after he scored the overtime 2-1 game-winner over Canada to give the American men’s hockey team its first Olympic gold medal in 46 years, 24-year-old forward Jack Hughes was interviewed on NBC. With several teeth missing, blood dripping from his mouth, and an easy smile regardless, Hughes looked like a cross between a Pictionary scrawl of a hockey player and a popular jock turned vampire character from some 1980s film.
“This is all about our country,” Hughes said, air whistling through the newly jagged gap in his front teeth. “I love the USA. I love my teammates. The USA hockey brotherhood is so strong.” He would know. Hughes and his older brother, Quinn, a defenseman, were one of two sets of actual brothers on the U.S. men’s hockey team at the Milan Cortina Olympic Games, the other pair being the bruiser podcasters Brady and Matthew Tkachuk. The Hughes brothers were roommates in Olympic Village, as were the Tkachuks; their rooms were across the hall from each other. Jack brought along The Odyssey to read, Quinn scattered his Team USA warm-ups everywhere, and the Tkachuks’ door was, literally, always open.
In the knockout-round quarterfinals against Sweden last Wednesday, it was Quinn, 26, who scored an overtime goal to keep the Americans in medal contention in Milan, one more line item to add to his rapidly expanding lore. (Others include “sees ghosts,” “helps friends,” and “orders another.”) Then on Sunday, against Canada, Jack—whose own résumé features things like “drafted first overall by the Devils,” “sliced his hand on glass at a steak house earlier this season and missed 18 NHL games,” and “spotted with pop star Tate McRae”—broke up a pass during 3-on-3 overtime, skated into the zone, and converted a Zach Werenski setup into that most elusive, effusive of things: an American golden goal. Score another one for the brotherhood.
Actually, I should be more specific: an American men’s golden goal. Team USA’s women had already won their Olympic tournament a few days earlier, on Thursday, with a 2-1 overtime winner of their own against Canada. Trailing 0-1 with 2:04 to play in the third period, five-time Olympian (and nonchalant romantic!) Hilary Knight had tipped in a powerful shot by Laila Edwards to tie the game. In overtime, it was Megan Keller who coolly dangled her way to gold. It was the seventh meeting of these two nations in a women’s gold medal game and the third victory for the United States. (I’m still scarred from witnessing one of the losses.) After the game, Kendall Coyne Schofield brought her son on the ice. Kelly Pannek tied an “IN KELLER WE TRUST” flag around her neck like a cape. Head coach John Wroblewski lingered on the bench, his face crumpling into proud tears. Women’s hockey hadn’t been an Olympic sport back in 1980; that would take another 18 years. Which made February 2026 the very first time both U.S. hockey teams earned gold medals in one Olympics.
A hockey gold medal twofer at the Winter Games! It’s an accomplishment that should result in everyone involved absolutely draped in shared glory, basking in mutual admiration. For several precious hours on Sunday—but only for those hours—that’s exactly what happened.
On the NBC broadcast, women’s players like Edwards were shown oohing and ahhing from the stands over Matthew Boldy’s bull-in-ballet-slippers goal, and they gawked like the rest of the world at spectacular U.S. goaltender Connor Hellebuyck, who played the game of his life in turning away 41 of 42 Canadian shots. On social media, people shared delightful archival images of Ellen Weinberg-Hughes, Jack and Quinn’s mother, a former U.S. national team hockey player who served as a player development consultant for this year’s gold medal–winning women’s team. And in a postgame interview, asked what person he’d thought about first when he scored his sudden-death game-winner, Jack Hughes replied: “Oddly enough, Megan Keller.”
these three all won olympian gold medals pic.twitter.com/oWI9kCmLgs— c (@pucknuck) February 22, 2026
All this synchrony was elegant and galvanizing. It made a lovely, lively conclusion to a Winter Games in which Team USA en masse earned more gold medals than ever before. And just as things were feeling really good? A shameless visitor from the United States government paid a visit to the men’s locker room, chugged a brewski, and shook up the Olympic discourse like a snow globe.
Unfortunately, I can’t say this is the first time I’ve been jump-scared by FBI Director Kash Patel as it relates to the sport of hockey. (Last year, as Alex Ovechkin approached and passed Wayne Gretzky’s goal-scoring record, there were multiple games during which cameras zoomed in on Patel and the Great One sitting side by side.) It also isn’t anything new for President Donald Trump to be interfacing with NHL players. (When the back-to-back champ Florida Panthers visited Washington, D.C., in January, the athletes all wore Trumpian red ties; the commander-in-chief called them “young, beautiful people” and added, “But I got power, too—it’s called the United States military.”) On Sunday evening, both of these forces combined to create a perfect PR firestorm for the men’s hockey team.
In videos—some posted by players onto their livestreams, some leaked to reporters—the sloppy, festive gold medalist men, many in ski goggles to protect their eyes from Champagne, welcome the thirsty Patel into their locker room to celebrate. They bounce around, they hoot and holler, they hang a gold medal from his neck. They grin in anticipation as he FaceTimes the president. Trump is in chatty mode, riffing for several mostly uninterrupted minutes, bringing the house down with lines like: “Your goalie played not bad!” He invites the team to the State of the Union address and to visit the White House, saying he’ll send a military plane. (“Close the northern borders!” one player chirps.)
A source sent me this video of FBI Director Kash Patel partying with the US Mens Olympic Hockey team. pic.twitter.com/egjmdhOAF6— William Turton (@WilliamTurton) February 22, 2026
Eventually, inevitably, the American president plays the hits. A little negging of the ladies, a little owning of the libs. “I must tell you, we’re gonna have to bring the women’s team,” he says about those other U.S. Olympic gold medalists. “If they weren’t invited, I do believe I probably would be impeached, OK?” Fraternal laughter all around from the USA hockey brotherhood.
There was a lot to dislike in all of this. Pick your poison. Maybe it was seeing all the athletes who are from (or play in) ICE-ravaged Minnesota just joshin’ with the powers of the state. Maybe it was the idea of Patel making the Milan trip on his FBI jet, our taxpayer dollars funding the dismantling of both our American institutions and our initially happy Sundays. Maybe it’s that tone—such merry misogyny—or maybe it is the demoralizing, chilling knowledge that to even use the word “misogyny” is enough to be immediately dismissed as hysterical or shrill. Maybe it is the dread of hearing the worst person you know react to the video by saying something like, “Ha, you think this is bad? This is nothing!” and realizing that they’re right.
Maybe it’s just the fact that everything is like this now: exhausting, rude, no big deal, and/or not a big enough deal, all of it caught in 4K. Man, and all anyone wanted to do was celebrate some kick-ass hockey games.
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Watching Sunday’s gold medal matchup, from puck drop to “Star-Spangled Banner,” my mind was its usual jumble of all the brilliant and brain-dead things I wanted to share about the big game. Like how the players all looked like giant kids out there in their International Ice Hockey Federation–mandated neck guards! Or how intense the pace was without commercial breaks! Or how thoroughly it bummed me out that Canada’s captain (slash class chaperone), Sidney Crosby, was really, truly sidelined by injury in the gold medal game of what is probably his last Olympics. Or how, in response to the noises I made when Nathan MacKinnon somehow did not score a goal here, my son asked me whether I was laughing or crying—and I wasn’t sure of the answer.
Here’s a better one ❤️ pic.twitter.com/W6DJ4j6bJX— Florida Dad (@FLDadReborn) February 22, 2026
I hoped to offer undying praise and thanks for American goalie (and chill bus snoozer) Hellebuyck, who stopped breakaways from Canada’s Connor McDavid (the best, most frustrated player in the NHL right now) and Macklin Celebrini (the league’s most instantly beloved) and who also pulled off a hot goalie stick save for the ages. I didn’t want to offer JT Miller and Vincent “I’m getting so fucked up tonight” Trochek an apology for my general attitude two weeks ago, but given their fine work fending off power plays, I figured I probably should. I really respected that Canada had a trio of antagonistic players whom some had started to refer to as “The Fine Line,” and that American Brock Nelson’s grandfather, great-uncle, and uncle had all won hockey gold either 46 or 66 years ago. I was all excited to share a wholesome meme in which Jack Hughes was recast as girl who is going to be OK, and to boost my buddy Craig Custance’s creepily accurate Team USA prediction from 2011.
Look out 2026 Olympics RT @usahockey: USA Hockeys 8 & under membership has reached 100,000 for the first time ever.— Craig Custance (@CraigCustance) January 24, 2011
I also reminisced about how in 2013, during the doldrums of an NHL lockout, I went to Ufa, Russia, to write about hockey’s preeminent under-20 international tournament, the World Junior Championship. At the time, the Americans had won the WJC only twice since its inception in the 1970s. Canada, by contrast, had racked up 15 golds. But in Ufa, Team USA’s top teens beat Canada’s 5-1 in a semifinal statement game, with some now familiar faces on both sides of the ice.
