After Team USA won the Miracle on Ice game over the USSR in the 1980 Olympics, they celebrated with then-Vice President Walter Mondale in the locker room, and took a congratulatory phone call from President Jimmy Carter, who told coach Herb Brooks that “we were watching the TV with one eye, and Iran and the economy with the other.” Carter invited the team over to the White House “for Cokes.” Brooks couldn’t celebrate just yet: That team, after all, still had a Gold Medal game to play. They eventually made it to the White House, not that it helped Carter any.

After Team USA won its thrilling gold medal game over Canada on Sunday, they celebrated with … FBI Director Kash Patel. Before you consider that another sign of American values eroding, remember that the 1980 Team USA visited the Oval Office just last December, and even gave President Trump a hat. Though, to be fair: They didn’t give Patel one.

Patel’s presence — and his chugging of a beer in the locker room no less — may have taken the shine off Team USA’s victory for some people, particularly those who might have been a little uncomfortable with all the go-USA patriotism on display in the first place. And yeah: I get it. It’s a weird time. But regardless, it is indisputably awesome that the United States won gold on Sunday, and it should make you feel happy, even if it also made Kash Patel happy, something that, we can all agree, should never happen.  Here are five  things about the gold-medal game to make you forget all about that locker-room scene.

1. We were actually underdogs.One of the biggest lies Americans tell themselves is that they are underdogs, ever, in anything. The best example of this came in the famous 1992 Dream Team Olympics, when Clyde Drexler, seconds after winning the Gold Medal while playing for what’s universally recognized as the most incredible accumulation of talent in sports history (John Stockton was the 12th man on that team!), told a reporter that the win was particularly special because “no one believed in us” despite multiple instances in which USA opponents asked for autographs during the game. We’re always the favorites. We’re always the empire the rest of the world is trying to take down.

Men’s hockey is a rare exception to this rule. (Another is men’s soccer, which we’ll re-discover at the World Cup this summer.) The United States hasn’t won a gold medal in men’s hockey at the Olympics since that 1980 team and had in fact won only two silvers since. (They finished fifth in China, seventh in South Korea and fourth in Sochi.) This year’s team was the result of a decades-long reconstruction of the entire program, the culmination of a down-to-the-studs makeover. Even then, they weren’t favored headed into the Canada showdown, and were, frankly, outplayed for most of the game. But they found a way to win anyway, in large part thanks to a heroic performance from goalie Connor Hellebuyck. Americans like to claim the odds stacked against them, that they had to overcome adversity and strife to reach the mountaintop, a mountaintop on which most of us were, in fact, born. This time, it is actually true.

2. The game made up for some major letdowns elsewhere.The United States actually won more gold medals in Milan than they had at any Winter Olympics, and there were plenty of rousing American storylines to follow, Alysa Liu’s being a prime example. But there were also some high-profile disappointments. Lindsay Vonn’s incredible comeback from her ACL tear ended up with her nearly losing her leg. Ilia Malinin, the self-professed Quad God, fell apart in his final routine, costing himself a widely expected gold medal.

And then there was the politics. Any American who so much as even slightly acknowledged that it’s a little bit weird to be representing this country at this particular moment came under attack from every level of the right-wing apparatus and, of course, the president himself. (The most telling aspect of Trump’s calling skier Hunter Hess a “loser” was that Hess never once said Trump’s name. Hess simply said he wanted to represent “all the things that I believe are good about the U.S. … my moral values.” Trump of course immediately saw any sort of nod toward moral value as a personal affront.) In between the sniping and surprises, the U.S. notched huge team victories in curling and women’s hockey, and non-marquee names like Jordan Stolz made the leap to glory. But the Team USA victory, coming on the last day of the Games, was the big “Go Us!” moment that many had been waiting for the entire fortnight.

3. The guy who scored the winning goal is actually a pretty great dude.You probably don’t want to know the social-media histories of most of the American hockey players—and we’ll get back to that—but you don’t need to feel conflicted about rooting for Jack Hughes, the 24-year-old kid who won the game for Team USA in overtime. He had just turned 18 when the New Jersey Devils picked him first over all in the 2019 Draft and he has become one of the most exciting young players in the league since, and one who has been unusual in the world of hockey by speaking out on social issues, most famously when — in the midst of an assault on those very rights — he praised the Devils having Pride Night by saying, “we’re a welcoming organization…and with how we grew up, my family really supports that too…there wasn’t even a thought about not doing it for us.” (He also pushed back two years ago when some teams and players refused to honor Pride Night.) He also might have just put together the greatest sports moment for a Jewish athlete in American history, and he did so after losing several of his front teeth after a Canadian player high-sticked him, another moment that will live forever in American sports history. The tooth shortage did not stop Hughes from very much enjoying himself postgame.

oh he's white girl wasted😭😭 pic.twitter.com/HNA7FdXpW5— amy (@huggyquinnifer) February 22, 2026

oh he's white girl wasted😭😭 pic.twitter.com/HNA7FdXpW5

4. There was a legitimate weepy moment on the ice afterward.In August 2024, Johnny Gaudreau, a star player for the Columbus Blue Jackets known as “Johnny Hockey,” was killed alongside his brother Matthew (also an NHL player) by a drunk driver while they were riding their bikes home for their sister’s wedding the next day. (The trial for the driver is expected to begin next month.) Johnny would have absolutely been a member of this team — he grew up playing alongside most of the roster — and the team chose to honor him and his brother by not only having a jersey made up for him, but by bringing Johnny’s two children onto the ice for team photos. “Johnny and Matty should be here, and that is still the biggest loss that all of us, USA Hockey, their family, our family, has gone through, and to have Johnny Jr. and Noa out there, it just felt right,” Gold Medal winner Dylan Larkin said afterwards. “Johnny’s family first.” If you are able to keep it together after reading that linked story, you are stronger than I am.

5. Only cheering for athletes who share your political beliefs is a loser’s game.Look: Most of the Team USA players in that locker room seemed very excited to party with Kash Patel. That’s not exactly the coolest thing to see and realize when you were just rooting for them to do their — and your — country proud. It’s hardly out of character for Team USA either: They were giggling with Trump during his congratulatory call afterward and pumped them up last year at the 4 Nations Tournament by calling Canada “the 51st state,” to the roars of the team. This is hockey. No matter what Heated Rivalry might make you want to believe, it’s a very Trump-supporting sport.

But, as I’ve written before, if you are waiting to have a team of athletes who are ethically identical to you as a fan in every way that is important to you, you are going to be waiting a very long time. Baseball fans have had domestic abusers like Aroldis Chapman on their teams; Patriots fans have to deal with an owner who sat next to Trump at the Melania premiere; Red Sox fans have so many memories of the 2004 World Series darkened by what we now know about Curt Schilling. There isn’t a team in any sport, anywhere, that doesn’t have someone who has done or said something that you disagree with. If this makes it impossible for you to cheer for your team, well, then will you have no teams to cheer for. And maybe that’s fine? Perhaps sports are just not for you? But for the rest of us, cheering for athletes as athletes is not the same as cheering for them as people. It’s entertainment. It’s emotion. It’s spectacle.

I’ve long argued that when you are rooting for a team, you are not rooting for the people on the team, not really. You are rooting for yourself, your own history with the team, your own rooting interest, your own happiness. Matthew Tkachuk’s politics have nothing to do with his ability to swing a hockey stick in a way that you find favorable. So just think about the hockey stick part, and not the politics part. I would love a team full of just me and my friends who share my political and ethical beliefs, but I also know that this team would lose, all the time, in gruesome fashion. (We would almost certainly all die. Quickly.) It’s no way to consume sports or, really, anything.

Sure: Team USA winning made Kash Patel happy. That sucks. I wish I hadn’t seen it. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t make you happy too. In fact, it should. I hope it did.

More From This Series

The Wild Olympic Curling Scandal Is a Sign of the Times

The Bad Bunny Super Bowl Was a Needed Escape From Trump

Are We Sick of Snoop? And 6 Other Olympic Subplots to Watch

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