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Losing this game would have haunted the Americans forever. RvS.Media / Monika Majer / Getty Images
MILAN — To their graves. To their f—ing graves.
Had they blown this one, had they let this golden opportunity slip away, had they lost the lead and their composure and the game and the gold against Canada — always Canada, God, why must it always be Canada — this one would have haunted the Americans forever. They waited their whole lives for this game, their whole lives plus 12 long years, only to spend the last 40 minutes of it chasing the puck around their own zone like a dog hopelessly flailing at a squirrel.
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They were staring down four more years of this. Four more years of the same conversation, the same questions, the same fumbling for answers. Four more years of being the little brother. Four more years of public respect masking private agony, envy, anger. Four more years of Mike Eruzione on the lecture circuit. Four more years of what-ifs, of why-nots, of how-comes. To their graves. That’s what Herb Brooks told that 1980 team during the second intermission of the Americans’ final game of the Olympics — two days after the Miracle on Ice victory over the Soviet Union — when they trailed Finland 2-1. A loss would have cost Team USA the gold medal, would have rendered the Miracle moot, would have reduced all that work and all that effort to a historical footnote. The Americans went out and scored three goals in the third to secure the win, the gold, the legacy.
Forty-six years later, it’s time — at long, long last — to put that story to bed. To tell a new one.
“Talk about 2026 now,” Vincent Trocheck said.
Team USA’s 2-1 overtime victory over Canada in Sunday’s gold medal game at Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena wasn’t a miracle. Not by any means. Not with a roster that carries a $200 million salary-cap hit in the NHL. Not with the Hugheses and the Tkachuks and Hart Trophy types up front and Selke Trophy types in the middle and Norris Trophy types on the back end and Mr. Vezina Trophy himself, Connor Hellebuyck, in net.
These Americans didn’t have the three generational talents at the top of Canada’s roster, the three guys who can go thermonuclear at any moment, but they had a better, more well-rounded team. More versatile forwards, better blueliners, a better goalie. This was a matchup of equals, a clash of titans. This team wasn’t built to fight for a medal. It was built to win gold. Anything less would have been failure, an all-too-familiar feeling in the annals of U.S. hockey. This team did what it was supposed to do. That’s not a miracle. It’s a mission accomplished.
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Yet it was miraculous in its own way. Because, despite all those assets and weapons and reasons to believe, the U.S. had no business winning this one. None. In maybe the fastest hockey game ever played, Canada was faster. In maybe the most stressful hockey game ever played, Canada was stronger. In maybe the best hockey game ever played, Canada was better.
A 1-0 lead on Matt Boldy’s brilliant goal — self-saucering a pass, dribbling it in the air and settling it down while splitting Canada’s top pairing of Cale Makar and Devon Toews before beating Jordan Binnington on the breakaway — never felt safe. A 1-1 tie after Makar finally beat Hellebuyck late in the second never felt even. Canada just kept coming, turning the mighty Americans into the flustered Finns, forcing them to repeatedly and desperately flip the puck out of the defensive zone just to catch a breath, to get a change, to have a chance.
The Canadians had all the chances, all the momentum, all the reason in the world to think they would — and should — win.
But the Americans had Hellebuyck. No question, Jack Hughes will go down as an American legend for scoring the game-winning goal in overtime — winning a puck battle behind his own net, winning a 50/50 puck at the blue line, then racing down the ice to rip a Zach Werenski feed past Binnington, sending the U.S. to glory and himself into history.
But Hellebuyck was the hero.
The man who entered this tournament with a reputation for crumbling in the biggest games put up one of the greatest goaltending performances of all time on the biggest stage. His second-period save on Toews will go down as possibly the greatest save in Olympic hockey history, reaching back with his right arm to get his paddle on both the puck and Toews’ stick, sending a sure goal skittering through the crease and wide of the net. It’s a sequence that will play on a loop in highlight packages — and on the inside of Team Canada’s eyelids every time they go to sleep — for as long as skates are laced and sticks are taped.
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And it was just one of 41. Hellebuyck stopped a Connor McDavid breakaway. He stopped a Macklin Celebrini breakaway. He stopped a Nathan MacKinnon point-blank scoring chance. That’s Canada’s thermonuclear triumvirate. Hellebuyck was the cooler every time.
“That guy should never buy a drink in Michigan ever again,” fellow Michigander Dylan Larkin said.
“Oh my gosh, they’re going to be talking about this performance for generations,” Matthew Tkachuk agreed.
Hellebuyck, for all his playoff failures, seemed impervious to the unique pressures and historic weight of the Olympics. Quinn Hughes said the almost unnervingly even-keeled Hellebuyck fell asleep on the bus to the rink before the quarterfinal game against Sweden, and that’s when he knew: “We’re good with this guy.”
“He was our best player by a mile,” Boldy said. “People like to have their opinions about him, but if you don’t have an opinion that he’s the best goalie in the world now, then I think you’re thinking wrong. He’s an absolute stud. He wants to be in those moments. He wants to make the saves. And he did just that. So he was definitely our MVP tonight.”
Then there’s Hughes. No, not that one. Jack. Big brother Quinn has taken over the conversation, the indefatigable and indomitable blueliner joining the ranks of the world’s best. But Jack was there not too long ago, an electrifying talent with skill and swagger to burn. Injuries derailed his career — first a knee, then a shoulder. He looked slower. Less sure of himself. He wasn’t taking over games anymore for the New Jersey Devils, wasn’t bringing people out of their seats.
Well, his golden goal — not long after he took a Sam Bennett stick to the teeth, and not long after he high-sticked Bo Horvat to nullify the ensuing power play — brought a country to its feet, and a bench full of highly stressed teammates into the rafters of Milano Santagiulia. J.T. Miller launched himself over the boards first in glee. Everyone else followed. Amid the buoyant bedlam, Quinn found Jack for a big hug.
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It was Jack’s fourth goal of the tournament to go with three assists. He was electric. He was dominant. He was one of the best players in the world. He was bloodied, and missing a tooth or two, but he was back.
Afterward, Quinn didn’t mince words.
“He’s 24 years old, he’s had some s—ty bounces,” he said. “People don’t know s—. There’s a bunch of idiots out there, and no one’s rehabbed before, you know? There’s reporters out there saying this and that. They don’t know what it’s like to get surgery for six months, not really feel good for 10 months, and do that back to back. For him to just persevere and keep believing and just keep going no matter what happens, he’s a special guy, special player.”
“He’s a freaking gamer,” Quinn added. “He’s always been a gamer. American hero.”
That the game ever reached that point, that it got to the crapshoot of three-on-three overtime at all, is hard for even the Americans to comprehend. They felt the ice tilt. They saw the shot totals. They watched in bewilderment as Celebrini missed on three Grade-A scoring chances late in the third, as MacKinnon missed the net with a yawning cage in front of him midway through the third, as Canada repeatedly had the game on its stick, only to see the puck wedge itself in Hellebuyck’s pads, flutter just wide, sail a bit high.
“The chances they had and how the puck didn’t go in, it’s kind of mind-blowing,” Larkin said. “I’ll watch the golden goal many, many times, but it’ll take me a while to watch how they missed all those chances.”
After the game — after they handed the American flag around like the Stanley Cup for victory laps, after the U-S-A chants stopped shaking the foundations of an arena that barely existed six weeks ago but now will live in American hockey fans’ memory forever — Auston Matthews, Matthew Tkachuk and Werenski grabbed a No. 13 Team USA jersey, Johnny Gaudreau’s jersey, and skated it around the ice, the flag in one hand, their friend in another.
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It was all smiles and laughs and happy tears for the Americans. Trocheck and J.T. Miller vindicated Bill Guerin’s heavily criticized inclusion of them on the roster by helping to kill off a 93-second five-on-three power play early in the second period. Matthews’ hellacious backchecking validated USA Hockey’s decision to make him captain. Hellebuyck showed he could win the big one. Jack Hughes showed he was still a star of stars. The bench was bursting with key contributors. They eschewed the posh players’ hotel and stayed in the spartan Olympic village, mingling with figure skaters and speedskaters: “The Olympic spirit,” Larkin called it. They embraced the challenge, the moment, the history.
And the United States, after decades of efforts to better wield its advantages in population and resources and level the playing field with its closest and biggest rival, showed that hockey isn’t just Canada’s game anymore. Forty-six years after the Miracle on Ice, Team USA finally wrote a new story — one that American hockey fans will never grow tired of telling.
“We did it,” Charlie McAvoy said. “We’re a part of that history. No one could ever take it away from us. This group’s going to walk together forever. I’ve never been so proud in my life.”
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Mark Lazerus is a senior NHL writer for The Athletic based out of Chicago. He has covered the Blackhawks and the league at large for 13 seasons for The Athletic and the Chicago Sun-Times. He has been named one of the top three columnists in the country twice in the past three years by the Associated Press Sports Editors. Follow Mark on Twitter @MarkLazerus