“Who were you rooting for?” Several people asked me. It was the day after the Olympics, and the USA men’s hockey team had beaten Team Canada to win gold, in dramatic overtime fashion on a beauty of a Jack Hughes goal that made him an instant sports icon.

People asked — “Who were you rooting for?” — because they know my family history. My Mom and Dad immigrated, legally, from Canada in the 1960s. I am a child of immigrants, the first U.S.-born member of my immediate family. We had nothing handed to us. Neither side of my family was affluent when they came here. I come from hard-working stock.

So people wonder: USA or Canada? Who were you rooting for? My answer: “I’m not like those people who come here illegally from Mexico and then wrap themselves in the Mexican flag at soccer games and root for Mexico AGAINST the U.S.”

I rooted for Team USA. Not only in the men’s final, but in the women’s, too. When Megan Keller scored the golden goal against Canada in OT, I was watching, and shouted as loudly as if the Kings won the Stanley Cup. I was so happy for those women who achieved their lifelong dream, for Team USA.

I did the same when Hughes scored the golden goal in the men’s game, on my 60th birthday. It was 46 years to the day after my 14th birthday — aka the Miracle on Ice, when a ragtag band of U.S. college hockey underdogs took down the Soviet Union’s arsenal of professionals, spawning the greatest sports play-by-play call ever from Al Michaels.

I have Team Canada jerseys in my closet, including one sized for a 10-year-old bearing the No. 4 of Bobby Orr, my childhood idol who starred in the Canada Cup all those years ago. I stop and listen when they play “Oh Canada” on TV. If Canada plays Sweden, I root for Canada. Finland. Russia. Czechia. Bring ’em all on and I root for Canada. I love Canada. It’s my heritage.

But Canada against USA? I bleed red, white and blue. And I have a Team USA jersey in that same closet to prove it.

When Jack Hughes fired that game-winner, it made an already great birthday even better. His postgame interview was spot-on, and old-fashioned, because we are so jaded now. He was proud to be part of the team, to represent USA. Proud to be an American. He gave all credit to his teammates, especially goalie Connor Hellebuyck, who stood on his head and, that day, was the consensus best hockey player on the planet.

Warm fuzzies all around, right? What’s not to love? Little did Jack Hughes and Team USA know, the American left was lying in wait, on the alert for some way to crap all over the warm fuzzies — especially if it involved President Donald Trump.

FBI Director Kash Patel was in the locker room for the celebration, having gone to Italy on an admittedly questionable “business trip” to talk to European law enforcement. Holding a beer, he called the president. Uh-oh. He got Trump on the phone to talk to the “boys.” Trump congratulated them, invited them to the State of the Union, and, being Trump, made an ill-advised sexist joke that he would “have to” also invite the women’s team or he’d probably get impeached. These players, fresh off the biggest win of their lives, adrenaline going 1,000 mph, in that instant, didn’t think of the PR implications or the inevitable crapstorm that would descend upon them from the left.

They chuckled. Bastards.

A couple of the more present-minded ones spoke up to say the women should be invited, and the U.S. was “two-for-two!” in gold medal matchups against Canada in these Olympics.

But those chuckles. It was all the blood the left needed in the water. Even less than what was shed by Jack Hughes when he got his teeth knocked out by a high stick before he scored the game-winner. Soon, social media was rife with breathless posts about misogyny and how Team USA was complicit in it and … and … Oh, how they hate Trump more than they love America.

A couple days later, crapstorm having promptly commenced, the men indeed appeared at the SOTU, to chants of “USA!” from members of Congress. The women’s team politely declined the invitation, saying they had prior travel, academic and professional commitments. Some still play in college, like those 1980 Miracle on Ice guys did. Some play in the fledgling Professional Women’s Hockey League, which the women call “The P-Dub.” It’s gaining traction and drawing crowds.

The women’s game is evolving and growing, thanks largely to increased participation by girls at the grass-roots level. Watch international women’s competition. The hockey is REALLY good. It is faster, more physical and more skilled than it was when women’s hockey became an Olympic sport not that long ago. (Google Olympian “Abbey Murphy” and find the video of the Minnesota Golden Gopher creating the most brilliant assist this side of Wayne Gretzky. As hockey people say, it was filthy.)

Women’s Olympic hockey has only existed since 1998 — 18 years after the Miracle on Ice. Since then, the 2026 gold is the third, in eight Olympics, won by the U.S. women. Their last one prior to this was in 2018.

There’s no doubt the treatment of women’s sports vs. men’s sports in the media, the public consciousness and the payroll has more evolving to do. It’s a work in progress. But anyone wondering why there was such a strong public reaction to the men’s win vs. the women’s need only look at the drought. Remember when the Cubs finally won a World Series after 108 years? The Red Sox? What if the Buffalo Bills FINALLY win a Super Bowl? The drought is an ingredient. Forty-six years, and that last one was as much a Cold War victory as it was a hockey game. Of course the 2026 edition drew a big reaction.

But. Trump was involved, and being Trump, he made a buffoonish, sexist joke. The left being the left, they jumped all over it. Never mind that the Hughes brothers attended the women’s gold medal game and celebrated it. Never mind that their mother — who competed for Team USA in 1992 — is part of the player development staff for the women’s Olympic team.

Never mind that the men’s and women’s teams celebrated each other’s success in mutual support, and hung out together in the Olympic village. Never mind that Vice President JD Vance attended two of the women’s games with his family.

Trump made a joke. The boys chuckled. They all must pay.

This, in a nutshell, is what’s wrong with America. Every gesture, every action, especially if connected to Trump, is fuel for hate and vitriol from the left. How DARE they accept an invitation to the White House. Don’t they know we MUST politicize EVERYTHING? Even, as we just saw, a hockey game that ends a 46-year gold medal drought.

Do I believe in Miracles? Yes. But I fear it will take one to restore some sanity to the USA that I love so much.

Tim Whyte is the editor of The Signal.

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