Is politics ruining sports? Partisanship simmers after Olympic gold for men’s hockey

The glow was still fresh on the United States’ first men’s hockey gold medal in 46 years, tears still wet from honoring a teammate killed by a drunken driver in 2024, when America’s polarizing politics joined the chat.

FBI director Kash Patel, who’d been in the crowd for the gold medal game in Milan, chugged a beer in the Team USA locker room then pounded a table. A post-9/11 Toby Keith song, “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American),” blasted in the background. Everyone sang along.

Then Patel got President Donald Trump on FaceTime. Players quieted as the president congratulated them. He suggested sending a military plane to fly the team to this week’s State of the Union speech.

“We’re going to have to bring the women’s team, you know that,” Trump said on the call, referring to the Olympic gold-medal-winning women and suggesting he’d get impeached if he didn’t.

The politicians in the locker room, the joke at the women’s expense, the outrage from both sides about everything except hockey: It was all on brand for 2026 America.

“It’s a sign of the times, the way things are with politics and everyone picking sides, left and right,” said Joe Dziedzic, a former NHL player from Minneapolis whose sister, the late Kari Dziedzic, had been the majority leader in the Minnesota Senate. “We can’t go and just enjoy the moment. Somebody’s gotta add something, whether it’s Patel in the locker room or whatever. Sometimes we look too far into things and try to stir the pot rather than enjoy something for what it is.”

Some looked at Trump’s seeming dig at the U.S. women’s team as another example of the president’s misogyny. Others said to chill — that he was only joking — despite the president having directed his ire earlier in the Games at other U.S. Olympians he deemed insufficiently patriotic.

Kelly Keegan, a popular podcaster with Barstool Sports, whose owner is prominent Trump supporter Dave Portnoy, raged against Trump’s joke on X.

“You’re a psychopath if you don’t understand what people are mad about,” Keegan posted, “and to continue to be willingly and painfully obtuse about it and sweep it all under the rug as ‘jokes’ means you’re a part of the problem!”

During Trump’s call, one man in the Team USA locker room yelled, “Two for two!” — seemingly an acknowledgement of the women’s team’s gold medal.

“Who yelled ‘two for two’?” two-time Olympic distance runner Kara Goucher, of Duluth, asked on social media. “I need to know because you are my new favorite male athlete.”

These Olympics had already seemed especially political for American athletes. Plenty were peppered with questions about Trump’s politics shifting the global order or about the massive immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota.

Trump later did invite the women’s team to the State of the Union Address. But on Monday, the women’s team said it would not be making the trip.

“We are sincerely grateful for the invitation extended to our gold medal-winning U.S. Women’s Hockey Team and deeply appreciate the recognition of their extraordinary achievement,” according to a statement from USA Hockey. “Due to the timing and previously scheduled academic and professional commitments following the Games, the athletes are unable to participate.

“They were honored to be included and are grateful for the acknowledgement.”

Players and coaches on the men’s team seemed to downplay the politics of it all. Head coach Mike Sullivan didn’t directly answer a postgame question about Trump’s phone call, saying the team had been a national inspiration. Captain Auston Matthews echoed that: “This is a huge moment for us, it’s a huge moment for the United States,” Matthews said. “There’s a lot of moving parts as far as our travels back home, but we’ll kind of see what happens.”

Women’s team players were quiet about it on social media on Monday. On Truth Social, Trump leaned into it after the men’s hockey win, posting an AI-generated video of himself, in his signature suit and tie, skating circles around the Canadian team, scoring goals and beating up a Canadian player.

Players were excited to be heading to Trump’s speech, team member Quinn Hughes said on “Good Morning America” Tuesday.

“We’re excited to go. … It’s going to be special for us,” said Hughes, who plays for the Minnesota Wild, adding that team members were also delighted about the women’s gold medal victory.

His brother, fellow player Jack Hughes, who plays professionally for the New Jersey Devils and scored the winning Olympic goal in overtime, said on “Today” that when the women’s team won, the two brothers looked like “the biggest superfans of all time.”

“We were just jumping up and down,” he said. “We couldn’t believe it.”

John Harrington, who played on the 1980 Miracle on Ice Olympic team and later coached men at St. John’s University and women at Minnesota State University, Mankato, said he didn’t realize the Cold War political implications of his Olympic team’s gold medal run.

Harrington can’t say he fully enjoyed watching Sunday’s gold-medal win over Canada. He was too anxious. His stomach hurt the whole game.

When Harrington read about Patel in the locker room, he doubted Patel was really in Milan on government business. And he didn’t like Trump’s dig at the women’s team. Most of all, he was sad that politics made it so people were talking about something other than two incredible gold medal Games.

“The nature of things right now is that you have to pick sides,” Harrington said. “It’s like, no! But it seems like everything has become that.”

Former Minnesota Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty grew up playing hockey in South St. Paul and played in Sunday night games with other state politicians while he was a state legislator and governor. He credits those games with helping alleviate political tensions.

He watched Sunday morning’s game with his wife, Mary. The game was a rollercoaster of emotions, Pawlenty said. Afterward, the Pawlentys teared up with pride in the team, the state and the country — and were filled with gratitude for goalies who rise to the biggest moments.

“Our great Olympic hockey teams winning gold will be remembered forever, while calls or non-calls into locker rooms or who drank beers in those rooms will soon be forgotten,” Pawlenty said. “I really hope sports will continue to bring us together, not become yet another political battleground. It’s one of the few remaining experiences we can share without having politics wreck it.”