I will address the Trump nonsense later, because while I think it is all overblown, teh fact it has gotten so much airtime is a bit of the point of where this country is slipping, but let's talk about the game, the win first.
I went out with four friends on Saturday Night in Princeton, NJ, going out fairly late (for Princeton), and I was shocked that three of the four were planning on getting up to watch the Gold Medal match. One of them is a fairly big hockey fan, at least come the playoffs. The other two are to my knowledge not, but this was big enough - USA v Canada in the showcase event of the Olympics. A micro-example of how this cut across sports into something bigger.
The macro example was getting up on Sunday morning, and following twitter on teh side while watching that enthralling game. I follow a lot of sports related people (reporters, athletes, pundits, talking heads). Some are squarely hockey writers/pundits/etc., or ones that talk about hockey enough that it wasn't surprising to see tweets from them. Then there's the set that are more general sports people, and it wasn't surprsiing either. But then there's a lot of people who I'm pretty sure do not follow hockey tweeting about it, in the hours of 8-11am on a Sunday (or earlier, some are West Coast based). There were basketball twitter people who may have never watched a second of NHL action; baseball people, football people, soccer people.
But that was nothing compared to the wildest group that got into the action - the people not even related to sports. The newscasters and news pundits, the actors and actresses and musicians. I do think that is the power of the Olympics a bit - because the prior paragraph about non-hockey sports people talking about it was fairly equally true of last year's smashing success that was the Four Nations tournament. This was that times a hundred.
Every know and then I would even venture over to the Wild West of the "For You" part of Twitter, and between various annoying AI slop came again random people talking about this game that I love. I know inherently 97% of them won't suddenly start watching hockey, but it is still cool as a die-hard hockey fan to see so many people start loving the sport as much as the national pride part.
And truly that was the best part - as many of the Tweets were about the quality, speed, ferocity, passion of the game - the incredible saves of Connor Hellebuyck, the incredible singular effort of Matt Boldy on his goal, the incredible final moments and the goal by Jack Hughes (another Devil!), and so much more. People seemed to tune in for USA! USA! and get captivated by the game itself, which was so cool to see.
None of that matters in comparison though to the reaction after that winning goal, the outpouring of emotions, everything to do with them celebrating and honoring Johnny Gaudreau, the celebrations on the ice, Jack Hughes being interviewed missing teeth. I had long wondered what it would be like to see the US win gold, and all of it was as incredible as I could have imagined.
That's when the tweets started pouring in of various bars (amazingly opening early, or in the case of the West Coast staying open late), families in homes, and people reacting to the insanity of the Hughes goal and the aftermath. This is sports, this is patriotism, meshing in again a way that it only can with the US Men's Hockey team, be it 1980 or now. Yes, if somehow the USMNT could theoretically win a World Cup it would be bigger than this, but that will almost certainly not happen. The US winning Gold just did.
That does bring me to the only downside, which I put much more on the reaction and the faults that show in our national consciousness (and in this case moreso on the left) compared to 2010. It started with Kash Patel celebrating with the team, which is gross. And then continued with Trumps phone call and terrible joke. The culprits were Kash Patel for thinking he deserved to down beers with the team, and Trump for making a terrible, misogynist joke as he is wont to do. Somehow though, the Men's team started catching heat - and this is where today's far-left liberals are just too awful.
What did they want? A group of 20-30 somethings that just accomplished one of their life's goals in the most dramatic way for their country, to tell the damn FBI Director to get out? Or even more ridiculously, to either (a) not accept a call from the damn President of the United States, or (b) while being simultaneously high on emotions and drunk out of their minds, to not reflexively laught at what was an admittedly funny line (which if anythign was aimed at the liberal mindset as much if not more than the women's team), or (c) even more ridiculously castigate the President on live TV?
Can we stop this nonsense - the rush by some to equate a few chuckles (along with a few "two for two" chants) with a view that the men's team is a bunch of misogynists is just crazy. Also, it is well known this other than maybe baseball players, hockey players skew more right than other athlete groups, so it should not at all be surprising that much of that team would be fine taking a call from Trump. But even then, we may hate him - hell I hate Trump as well with every fiber of my being, but he is still the President right now and absolutely has the right to congratulate a US team on their success. I do wish the team left it at a white house visit rather than attend a State of the Union which is essentially now a campaign rally, but whatever. The fact so much energy has been expounded this is the height of liberal ridiculousness.
Anyway, back to happier topics - in the end, I won't forget that feeling when the 3-1 sprang in OT (started by a masterful chip out of the zone by Hughes), seeing Werenski outduel MacKinnon and layer over a soft pass right into the shooting zone, and then my current favorire NHL player rifle it past. That moment, the celebration it led to, was just so special, it did everythign that I hoped it would do when I wrote back in 2010 about the dream of one day seeing the US accomplish this feat. So grateful to be around to see it.
