2026 Olympic
Hockey
Gold medalists Auston Matthews, left, and Connor Hellebuyck. Gregory Shamus / Getty Images
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Good morning to everyone except whoever decided to hand out stuffed animals to hockey players who’ve just lost the biggest game of their lives. Read the rink, guys.
Before we get going, a sincere thank you for following along with our coverage throughout the Olympics. The men’s tournament was the first time NHL players participated since 2014, and it lived up to the hype — as did the women’s tournament. You can read our Olympic hockey coverage here and the rest of our Olympic coverage here.
They finally did it. Almost 30 years after their only other best-on-best win, the Americans have finally climbed back to the top of the mountain. And while that 1996 World Cup win was a nice building block, this feels more like the finished product. Olympic gold, at the expense of their greatest rival, with the whole world watching. Just what they’d been building toward for decades.
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Time will tell just how much Jack Hughes’ OT winner seeps into the American sports consciousness, and whether it sticks to the same degree the “Miracle on Ice” has. That’s a tall task, but it will hold some space, with the goal providing a simple and emphatic exclamation point on a team win. At the very least, it gives every American kid in a driveway or on a shinny rink a moment to emulate. And having it come from a guy who’d just had his teeth knocked out? Nice touch, hockey gods.
Hughes will get the highlights, but the real hero was Connor Hellebuyck. He finished the tournament with a tidy .956 save percentage and 1.18 goals-against average and saved his best for last, making 41 saves in the gold medal game. He even got an assist on the winning goal, which actually feels like showing off if you ask me.
Did Team Canada get goalied? Sure it did, but that was always a big part of the plan for any Team USA win. Goalies are part of the team, and one nation has most of the best ones these days. When that country wins thanks to its goalie, it’s not a fluke, it’s destiny. And this time, destiny said it was finally time for the Americans to have their moment.
One of the best parts of international best-on-best hockey is watching guys you know from the NHL redefine the way fans see them. The Olympics may be the only time in a player’s career that he can rewrite his story so emphatically in just a few short weeks.
So, who pulled that off at this year’s event? Glad you asked. Here are eight names who’ve done the most to change how they’re viewed.
Connor Hellebuyck
Macklin Celebrini
Juraj Slafkovský
Bill Guerin
Juuse Saros
The Hughes brothers
Auston Matthews
Jordan Binnington
We’ll leave the list there and won’t worry too much about any of the players who may have gone the other way. Sam Bennett, Clayton Keller, Tomáš Hertl and Jesper Bratt, among others, can thank me later.
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Yesterday’s OT goal was the second game-winning goal of the tournament for Hughes; he also got credit for the GWG against Slovakia in the semifinal. Can you name the only other American NHLers to score multiple Olympic winners?
Hints: Both players are now retired but were teammates on Team USA in 2010 and 2014. They were good, though neither is in the Hall of Fame. One of them had a dad who played for Team Canada at a reasonably well-known international event. And the other one might best be known for fighting Canadians.
Answer below.
✉️ President Donald Trump has invited the U.S. men’s hockey team to tomorrow night’s State of the Union address in Washington, D.C. Here’s the latest.
🔥 Where were you when Team USA won gold?
🇨🇦 What lessons can Canada take from this crushing loss? For one, the World Championships might matter more than we think.
🐧 Arpon Basu writes about Sidney Crosby missing what was probably his final Olympic game. In Pittsburgh, Josh Yohe writes that Crosby’s NHL career deserves a better ending than his Olympic career.
🎙️ “The Athletic Hockey Show” was live after the men’s gold medal game as Max Bultman, Sean Gentille, Jesse Granger and Mark Lazerus (from Milan) reacted to Team USA’s win.
🧂 A Canadian fan put a rare Jack Hughes hockey card up for sale after yesterday’s game and ended the listing by writing “I hate you, Jack Hughes.” Fair.
🫂 Chris Pronger has played in Olympic gold medal games, in playoff overtime games and in the Stanley Cup Final. Even he was stressed out yesterday.
🍁 Canada in crisis?
For the first time since 1998, Canada is coming home from an NHL-attended Olympics without a gold medal from either the men or women.
Both national teams won silver, which is to say they failed. That’s just the way it goes up here, where any major best-on-best tournament is gold or bust.
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The last time this happened, back in 1998, the country went into crisis mode, convening a national summit on the state of the game in August 1999. Wayne Gretzky had just retired, joining Mario Lemieux on the sidelines. There was a very real feeling that the sport was slipping away.
Now, over a quarter-century later, it’s happened again, only worse because it’s Team USA winning twice. So, should Canadians be strapping in for another round of crisis? Is it time to start booking space for another summit? Do we need to take a long hard look in the national mirror and have a brutally honest discussion about how it’s not our game anymore?
Arpon Basu took a look at this question in a column yesterday, and reached basically the same answer I do: No. Don’t be silly.
First, let’s have a little context here. The 1999 freakout came on the heels of not just the Nagano flameout, but also a loss in the 1996 World Cup. Canada hadn’t won a best-on-best since 1991, which felt like forever.
Today, even through the sting of two gold medal losses, the situation isn’t the same. Canada’s men are one year removed from a best-on-best win at the 4 Nations and had won three of the last four Olympic tournaments with NHL players. The women had won gold in five of the last six.
That makes 2026 feel more like a blip than a catastrophe. Maybe it doesn’t stay that way, and we end up looking back on the last two weeks as a true passing of the torch, the event where Team USA pulled out in front to stay. It could happen.
But if you were looking to overreact, you probably would have liked to have seen some more emphatic results. Both gold medal losses came via three-on-three overtime, with the men dominating most of their game and the women leading late into theirs. Losses are losses, and there are no style points at this level, so close shouldn’t cut it. The Americans won both games, and they don’t count any less for being close. They could have gone either way? Sure, but they didn’t.
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All of that makes for good reason to be disappointed. It’s not a reason to overreact, or to get all performative. High expectations can be a curse, but they have to be earned. Canada has earned the pressure through years of success.
Now, the Canadians have to start down the difficult path of earning it all back. They’ll need some big wins to do it. And sure, maybe some time spent looking in the mirror. But a summit? A national conversation? A country in crisis? Settle down, eh.
Hoo boy, is it ever going to be tough to go back to the NHL regular season, which resumes on (checks schedule) Wednesday, I guess. Do you remember what was happening with all that? Be honest, we’re all in the same boat.
The good news is that you’ve still got a few days to get yourself back into regular-season shape. So, here’s my incredibly condensed list of what you need to know:
Teams have between 23 and 27 games left to play. The season ends April 16.
The hottest team in the league going into the break was the Columbus Blue Jackets, who’ve won seven straight to move within four points of a wild-card spot.
Also red-hot: the two Eastern Division leaders, with the Tampa Bay Lightning at 8-1-1 in their last 10 and the Carolina Hurricanes at 8-0-2. In the West, the Minnesota Wild are 8-1-1 and have won five straight to move ahead of the Dallas Stars for second in the Central, while the Anaheim Ducks are back in a wild-card spot thanks to an 8-2-0 run.
A few of the contenders have gone cold, most notably the Colorado Avalanche, who’ve looked mortal after seeming unbeatable in the first half. The Vegas Golden Knights are just 3-5-2 in their last 10 but still lead the Pacific as the Oilers spin their wheels.
Anyone thinking about tanking had better move quickly, because the Vancouver Canucks have opened up a seven-point “lead” for last place, while also shutting down their starting goalie for the season. The New York Rangers are sure trying, though.
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And finally, we’re less than two weeks from the trade deadline, which is March 6 this year. That’s next week! And speaking of trades, the Olympic freeze is over as of last night.
The two other Team USA players to have multiple game-winning goals at the Olympics are Zach Parise and David Backes.
Parise, whose father J.P. represented Canada at the legendary 1972 Summit Series, had two winners in 2010: against Switzerland in the quarterfinal and Finland in the semifinal (pictured above). He also scored the dramatic last-minute goal that sent that year’s gold medal game into overtime.
Backes, whose memorable pre-Olympic fight tour in 2010 saw him take on Canadians’ Jonathan Toews, Corey Perry and Rick Nash over the course of two weeks, had winners against Switzerland in the 2010 prelim and against the Czechs in the quarterfinal.
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Sean McIndoe has been a senior NHL writer with The Athletic since 2018. He launched Down Goes Brown in 2008 and has been writing about hockey ever since, with stops including Grantland, Sportsnet and Vice Sports. His book, “The Down Goes Brown History of the NHL,” is available in book stores now. Follow Sean on Twitter @DownGoesBrown