{"id":468025,"date":"2026-02-23T12:03:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T12:03:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/468025\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T12:03:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T12:03:18","slug":"islanders-news-golden-brock-and-bo-silver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/468025\/","title":{"rendered":"Islanders News: Golden Brock and Bo Silver"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1980, it was Jim Craig. In 1996, it was Mike Richter. In 2026, it was Connor Hellebuyck playing the role<\/a> of goaltender spoiler keying a U.S. victory over a favored opponent. Deciding the gold medal via 3-on-3 overtime feels silly, but it\u2019s at least an improvement over the shootout (Peter Forsberg, 1994, and Czechs over Canada, 1998) and it provided the platform for Jack Hughes and Zach Werenski to take their heroic turn against the three top players in the world.<\/p>\n

Like the Americans of Squaw Valley 1960 and Lake Placid 1980, they\u2019ll always have a tale to tell their descendants about 2026. Compared to all the other athletes toiling away in obscure sports most of us only hear about every four years, Olympic hockey with NHLers is kind of a sideshow, a co-opted forum for what should basically be just a World Cup. But when the players get that into it, it\u2019s fun to see them get their reward (or in Nathan MacKinnon\u2019s case, heartbreak\u2026those long faces, reminiscent of Gretzky, Lindros, Yzerman & Co. in 1996 when Canada was supposed to prove once and for all who owned the sport).<\/p>\n

I do feel bad for Bo Horvat though; all he did was everything asked of him, winning faceoffs so the superstars could get on the ice, even drawing a penalty late in regulation to erase Sam Bennett\u2019s mistake and give Canada\u2019s goldenboy power play a chance to win it all. They let him down though. I hope someday Bo will be proud of his medal and this experience, \u2018cause the whole \u201cgold or bust\u201d entitlement approach is no way to go through life.<\/p>\n

This is an Islanders blog, though:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 1980, it was Jim Craig. In 1996, it was Mike Richter. In 2026, it was Connor Hellebuyck…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[26255,5],"class_list":{"0":"post-468025","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-bits-o-islanders-news","9":"tag-hockey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116119850426679283","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}