“This is the situation in our country at present. I love the USA. I love my teammates.” Jack Hughes said it with new blood on his face, and a tooth or two gone, the sort of postgame fact that, like a good, fits. The New Jersey Devils star had just slipped in the overtime goal that won an Olympic men hockey gold medal to the United States and it made a physical and close final look like what the game is at its most emotive.
To the American fans the meaning falls in the history as much as the highlight. The objective provided Team USA with the first Olympic women men hockey since 1980, and the challenge made it more difficult: Canada, the neighbor, the competitor, the norm. Hughes also scored on the goalie of Canada, Jordan Binnington, yet it was the entire momentum of the game that contributed to the response, maintaining the nerves, and opening and closing paths, and a sense that a single bounce might be all it takes to change everything. Hughes, whose third period stick to the mouth penalty had appeared, nonetheless, made his way into the play that counted. The image of a star playing through the damage that people could see was not new to hockey, but what was different was the speed in which the image became a part of the narrative that people shared like evidence of credibility. Then Hughes pointed the spotlight in other places.
Hughes said: “Unbelievable game by Hellebuyck.” “He played like a mile better than he had been playing.” The Fox account featured the numbers of 40 saves by Connor Hellebuyck of Canada, which is the amount of times the puck was sent to the dangerous side and the U.S. depended on its goaltender to make the overtime a possibility that it did. Even the applause, which made much noise, was almost the instinct of a captain, though it was the applause of a goal-scorer: the goal-keeper in a one-goal match is the silent collaborator on the score board.
The words of Hughes after the game never fell into mediocrity. It’s unbelievable. The U.S. are a hockey fraternity. It is so powerful, he narrated to NBC, linking the victory to the teammates, ex-players who contacted him back, and a sense of national identity that tends to pull with them on the global events. His voice was just like the nature of rivalries at such a level personal, boastful, loud, and that did not require any extra amplification.
During the post-final hours, the moment continued to grow outside the rink. An audio tape recorded in a locker-room showed President Trump giving the team congratulations on the call at one point on a speakerphone, telling the players, “You were all unbelievable,” but singling out the goalie instead of the rest.
Despite the background noise, the main picture remained clear: a young American star, obviously beaten to pieces, saying in the simplest possible terms what the jersey meant. “All the country was in it to-night,” Hughes said.
