The US men’s and women’s teams claimed titles at the Winter Games this past week. The warm fuzzy feelings didn’t last long
Keeping politics at arm’s length for the US men’s hockey team’s gold-medal matchup with Canada was always going to be difficult.
The game fell on the 46th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice, when an underdog group of US college players upset the mighty Soviet Union team against the backdrop of the cold war. But the US team who took the ice on Sunday were no plucky band of amateurs making a stand for democracy against authoritarianism – a point underscored when the US and Canada met last year in the 4 Nations Face-Off. Canadian fans booed the Star-Spangled Banner and the US players, either unaware of, or unsympathetic to, Canadian desires to be neither the 51st US state nor the USA’s opponent in a scorched-earth trade war, dropped the gloves to fight their opponents as soon as the game commenced.
Sunday’s game, though, was played with the utmost sportsmanship – and not just because Olympic rules punish fighting harshly. The teams’ well wishes extended beyond the traditional handshake line. Jack Hughes, who scored the winner for the US, was charming and gracious in victory, saying that one of his first thoughts was a recent conversation with Megan Keller, who grabbed the gold-clinching goal for the American women’s team a few days prior. Hockey’s force as a unifier was emphasized further when a video in which Hughes spoke of the importance of LGBTQ rights went viral.
