Expectation finally caught up to reality on Sunday in Milan, even if it took an excruciating, cardiac-event-inducing game to get there.
The United States men’s Olympic hockey team won the gold medal, outlasting Canada in a thriller that will not be forgotten for decades to come.
This wasn’t a miracle. Forget the lame 1980 comparisons. Al Michaels doesn’t need to ask if you believe in anything.
What happened on the ice wasn’t a bunch of plucky college kids slaying a Soviet dragon.
No, this was the coronation of a modern puck superpower.
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Getting to that podium, however, was a spectacularly frustrating watch. The U.S. entered this tournament with an unprecedented roster pool. So, naturally, the American brain trust overthought it.
They built a roster bizarrely obsessed with “grit” — the hockey establishment’s favorite buzzword for guys who hit hard but occasionally forget how to score.
And yet the U.S. spent large chunks of this tournament looking ironically outworked, winning ugly.
By the time Sunday rolled around, a reckoning felt inevitable, at least to me.
Sure, Canada was missing Sidney Crosby, throwing some real wrenches in their gears, but they still boasted a terrifying armada. I was awake far earlier than 5 a.m., bleary-eyed and clutching a Diet Mountain Dew, worried sick about Cale Makar — somehow an afterthought heading into this game — and the Canadian monster trio of Macklin Celebrini, Connor McDavid, and Nathan MacKinnon.
And for a good chunk of Sunday’s final, those fears were entirely justified.
Let’s be brutally honest: The United States was not the better team for 60 minutes.
But they certainly had fortune on their side. In the third period, the hockey gods wrapped themselves in an American flag.
It started with Connor Hellebuyck’s unbelievable, logic-defying stick save.
Then came the Canadian charity. Celebrini botched a clean breakaway. MacKinnon somehow whiffed on a glaring open net. And just for good measure, the officiating crew inexplicably forgot how to count to six, ignoring a blatant too-many-men-on-the-ice situation for the Americans. The U.S. wasn’t just given a lifeline; it was handed an entire fleet of rescue boats.
But they survived. Maybe there was something to that whole “grit” thing.
And then came the beautiful, chaotic cruelty of sudden-death 3-on-3 Olympic overtime.
You don’t need to dominate the game there. You just need a singular, fleeting moment of absolute, unadulterated greatness.
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Werenski played the odd-man rush like a maestro. He stared down MacKinnon, beat him one-on-one, and feathered a flawless cross-ice pass to the left-wing circle. Hughes was waiting. He snapped the puck home, burying the game-winner and instantly cementing the single greatest moment in American hockey in the modern era. (Sorry, T.J. Oshie.)
Now that’s a wake-up call.
But as sweet as Sunday was, the real story is what’s coming next.
This 2026 roster was flawed, yet they still won gold. Now look at the cavalry waiting in the wings. Cole Caufield and Lane Hutson weren’t even on this team. Neither were Logan Cooley, Matthew Knies, Frank Nazar, Shane Pinto, or the Sharks’ Will Smith.
If that isn’t enough to make Hockey Canada sweat, consider the pipeline for 2030: Zeev Buium, Cutter Gauthier, Ryan Leonard, and Jimmy Snuggerud are all looming. In net, the U.S. will have the luxury of adding Spencer Knight, Gilroy native Dustin Wolf, and Jacob Fowler to the mix.
It’s an embarrassment of riches.
For decades, American fans have had to lean on the nostalgia of 1980, treating it like a religious text because there was nothing modern to replace it.
Those days are dead and gone. These Americans weren’t underdogs who needed a miracle. They were apex predators, worthy adversaries who took Canada’s best shot and countered with a knockout blow.
The world — knocked off its axis on Sunday — has four years to come to grips with this new reality. When the puck drops in the French Alps for the 2030 Games, the United States won’t be hoping for a miracle.
No, they will be the defending champions.
And they’ll be the favorites to repeat.
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