About this rating
On Feb. 19, 2026, the U.S. women’s Olympic hockey team beat Canada in a 2-1 game, winning gold and prompting an invitation from U.S. President Donald Trump to attend his State of the Union address on Feb. 24.
The women’s hockey team declined the invitation, citing scheduling conflicts, in a move many read as an intentional distancing. Amid this speculation, an image circulated online purportedly showing Canada’s prime minister alongside both the U.S. and Canadian women’s hockey teams.
“Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has invited both teams to his office for a photo op. He felt bad for the American women’s team not going to the White House,” one caption on a Threads post (archived) that received more than 115,000 likes, as of this writing.
The image also spread on Facebook, Reddit and X. Many in the comments appeared to believe the image was authentic, with some praising Carney’s apparent extending of an olive branch to the U.S. team as a “class act.”
It’s unclear where the image originated, but it’s not real. There is no evidence Carney extended such an invitation to either team, and the image shows clear signs of artificial intelligence generation. As a result, we’ve rated the image fake.
One player’s jersey, for example, misspells “Canada,” instead reading “CAANADA.” The Canadian maple leaf on one player’s shirt appears blunted and out of place with other leaves on the players’ jerseys. These kinds of visual discrepancies are common features of images that were generated using AI.
Another player’s fingers are misshapen, while another’s thumb appeared warped and reduced. Rings on another player’s hand also appear one-dimensional, as seen below:
(Snopes Illustration)
A general
(Google)
A search for images related to the keyword “hockey” on the official image archive for the prime minister’s office returned only one result that was unrelated to the image depicting Carney with the women’s teams.
The man in the image additionally did not match the real Carney’s
(Wikimedia Commons)
Official images of the U.S. and
While Snopes does not exclusively rely on AI-detection software tools such as Hive because they are not always reliable, we do supplement our reporting with its results. Hive determined the image of Carney with the U.S. and Canadian teams was 100% AI-generated.
‘Donald J. Trump: “Congratulations to Our Great U.S.A. Ice Hockey Team. THEY WON THE GOLD. WOW!…’ Trump’s Truth, https://trumpstruth.org/statuses/36858. Accessed 25 Feb. 2026.
Hockey, U. S. A. ‘GOLDEN: U.S. Women Clinch Olympic Gold With 2-1 Overtime Win Over Canada’. Team USA Hockey, 19 Feb. 2026, https://teamusa.usahockey.com/news_article/show/1355939-golden-u-s-women-clinch-olympic-gold-with-2-1-overtime-win-over-canada.
‘Photos’. Prime Minister of Canada, https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/photos. Accessed 25 Feb. 2026.
Search Media – Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=mark+carney+2026&title=Special%3AMediaSearch&type=image. Accessed 25 Feb. 2026.
‘United States Wins 3rd Olympic Gold in Women’s Hockey, Beating Canada 2-1 on Megan Keller’s OT Goal’. AP News, 19 Feb. 2026, https://apnews.com/article/us-canada-womens-hockey-olympic-final-141b5904352673676656cbe2a1c253e5.
‘US Women’s Gold Medal-Winning Team Declines Invitation from Trump to Attend State of Union Address’. AP News, 23 Feb. 2026, https://apnews.com/article/trump-state-of-union-womens-hockey-gold-medal-2311fcc12756a72d8733f0f8c12116f8.
Taija PerryCook is a Seattle-based journalist who previously worked for the PNW news site Crosscut and the Jordan Times in Amman.
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