There wasn\u2019t much that was normal about Team USA winning gold at the Milan Olympics. It was the first time in over a decade that NHL players competed at the Winter Games, providing the world an opportunity to see how far U.S. hockey had come in development, and how much it had caught up to Canada. That wasn\u2019t normal. The United States beat a loaded Canada team stacked with the world\u2019s best players, primarily by utilizing team play and counter-offense. That wasn\u2019t normal. They partied in the locker room with the director of the FBI after the game, and gleefully giggled at President Trump\u2019s sexist joke. Sadly, that was normal \u2014 par for the course for a sport often at odds between the players who compete, and those the NHL is trying to court as fans.<\/p>\n
In one fell swoop Team USA managed to alienate a huge portion of the current NHL fanbase in the United States, undermine many of the initiatives the league has been trying to make, and turn off the precise segment of the sports market hockey has been trying so desperately to gain. A potentially legendary bag-fumbling by stars of a sport who have a vested interest in seeing it grow in popularity, increasing reach and revenue in the process.<\/p>\n
To be clear: The issue isn\u2019t that Team USA took a celebratory phone call from the President of the United States. That has been happening for decades, and it\u2019s woven into the fabric of the Olympics. Where this all got profoundly bizarre was both the nature of the team\u2019s call with Trump, and their partying with FBI director Kash Patel \u2014 who was in the locker room for \u2026 reasons? The official government line is that Patel was there to conduct business in Milan, though it\u2019s unclear what business the director of domestic federal law enforcement had to do in Italy, on a Sunday, during the Olympic games, or why it necessitated him attending a sporting event and chugging beers with the team afterwards.<\/p>\n
Then there was the call with the President, which contained the normal pleasantries you\u2019d expect \u2014 before taking a distinct turn. Trump invited the U.S. men\u2019s team to attend the State of the Union address on Tuesday night, even offering to send a military jet to pick them up, which they gleefully accepted as a group. The players then laughed at Trump\u2019s sexist joke warning that he\u2019ll begrudgingly \u201chave to invite the women\u2019s team\u201d or \u201cthey might impeach me.\u201d The United States women\u2019s team won gold, also beating Canada in the final, but were relegated to a punchline. This was shortly followed by an unidentified Team USA player audibly requesting the president to \u201cclose the northern border,\u201d embracing the isolationist stance the United States has taken under Trump.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s briefly appreciate that everyone in the Team USA locker room was partying to patriotic music and screaming about the \u201cred, white, and blue\u201d while drinking Corona (a beer originally from Mexico) and Michelob Ultra \u2014 both of which are owned by the Belgian company InBev. Nothing says \u201cU-S-A, U-S-A\u201d like getting down with European-owned corporate beer instead of anything brewed by one of the 9,796 U.S.-owned and operated breweries.<\/p>\n
In recent years, the NHL has become more aware of what it actually is and less concerned with aspirational fantasy. Hockey will never compete in the United States with football or basketball. There are dozens of socioeconomic and social reasons why, but at its heart, hockey is fundamentally a Canadian winter sport that has been adopted and spread throughout the United States. This is having a phenomenal impact in non-traditional markets, but there\u2019s an emphasis here on \u201cnon-traditional.\u201d Instead of trying to carve off football and basketball viewers, the NHL has been marketing itself to non-sports fans, emphasizing women<\/a>, supporting the LGBTQ+ community with Pride Nights, and making substantial inroads with Gen Z as a result<\/a>.<\/p>\n The most mainstream attention the sport of hockey has gotten in the last two decades occurred right before the Winter Olympics, as the HBO series Heated Rivalry became one of the hottest new shows of 2025 while exploring a fictional romantic relationship between two rival NHL players. Call me presumptuous, but I don\u2019t think there\u2019s a big piece of the Venn diagram that crosses over \u201cDonald Trump Fan\u201d and \u201cGay Hockey Love Story Fan.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to note that Team USA is not a monolith. Videos from the locker room do appear that it was an ultra-MAGA love-fest in Milan, but several players on the national team have either been apolitical or publicly discussed the need for inclusiveness in hockey. Zach Werenski of the Columbus Blue Jackets spoke about the effect of Heated Rivalry after Team USA\u2019s opening win over Latvia<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone is saying how great it is, I just haven\u2019t seen it yet. It\u2019s definitely good for the sport of hockey. Whenever you can add more eyes to the game and have people talk about the game and talk about inclusivity, I think it\u2019s just great for the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n While Olympic hero Jack Hughes, who not only scored the game-winning overtime goal, but gave us the iconic photo of his toothless grin and bloodied face, spoke in 2024 about why Pride Nights in the NHL are important to him<\/a>, and why he wouldn\u2019t participate in any Pride Night boycotts, as some locker rooms in the NHL did.<\/p>\n \u201cThe team I play for, the Devils, we really support that, and we\u2019re a really welcoming organization, so I think a bunch of guys on our team were really looking forward to that. With how we grew up, our family really supports that too. I can\u2019t speak for other teams, but I know in New Jersey that was a night that everyone on our team was really welcoming, and they know it\u2019s really important, so it wasn\u2019t even a thought not to do it for us.\u201d<\/p>\n The gold medal-winning team had a roster that was largely defined by two sets of brothers: Matthew and Brady Tkachuk, as well as Jack and Quinn Hughes. The former born in Arizona with a decorated NHL father, the latter in Florida to non-NHL athletes. The Tkachuk brothers have largely become the face of Team USA, getting the lion\u2019s share of coverage during the games \u2014 and truthfully, having them be the face of U.S. hockey is a little like having the Gronkowski Bros being representative of all football players. It\u2019s a similar vibe, and also why it\u2019s so unsurprising that the Tkachuks were front-and-center, embracing Kash Patel and partying with him \u2014 it\u2019s their aesthetic.<\/p>\n While Team USA partying with Patel and fawning over Trump might play well on X, it doesn\u2019t appeal to the prime demographic who are actually watching hockey on a regular basis. Currently, 86% of digital hockey viewers are from Gen Z and 51% of new fans are women, which is the highest in men\u2019s North American pro sports. These same demographics are running away from the MAGAsphere in droves<\/a>. In addition, there\u2019s as much of a chance that hardcore Trump fans will start watching hockey because of this as there was a chance of them actually following through on boycotting the NFL. It\u2019s just not going to happen.<\/p>\n We\u2019re left with a sport that\u2019s at odds with itself, during a time of momentous change. A new generation of young, diverse fans running headfirst into a sport that has often held a reputation for being insular, tribal, exclusionary, and prejudiced. Team USA\u2019s celebration was everything the NHL has been trying to push against, now it\u2019s on full display.<\/p>\n Like it or not, the gold medal win is now synonymous with Donald Trump\u2019s policy and politics. There\u2019s no doubt the NHL hates this, a lot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There wasn\u2019t much that was normal about Team USA winning gold at the Milan Olympics. It was the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,4,2602],"class_list":{"0":"post-468855","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-olympics"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116122646475619071","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468855","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=468855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}