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On Sunday, Brady Tkachuk won an Olympic gold medal in Milan when the U.S. beat out Canada in the men’s hockey final. On Tuesday, he was grinning and gripping in the Oval Office, feted by Donald Trump, along with most of his teammates. That evening, Trump gave the team a grand entrance in the middle of the State of the Union address, holding them up as an emblem of American victory. Both houses of Congress gave them an ovation.

By Thursday, Tkachuk was finishing up a morning skate in Ontario, where he is the captain of Canada’s most boring NHL franchise, the Ottawa Senators. As part of the NHL’s standard media protocols, he was then required to answer questions from the assembled media who wanted to know his thoughts on a few things: One, why did Tkachuk and the bulk of the American team laugh heartily when Trump belittled the gold medal–winning U.S. women’s hockey team? (Trump had explained to the men that he’d have to also invite the women to D.C. so that he would not get impeached.) And, two, how did the Ottawa captain feel about the White House posting an A.I.-generated video on its TikTok account that purported to show Tkachuk antagonizing the country where he works? “They booed our national anthem, so I had to come out and teach those maple syrup–eating fucks a lesson,” Tkachuk “says” in the video. “Canada, we own you, little bro.” This video had come out shortly after the game, before the team went to D.C., and now Tkachuk was being asked to talk about all of it.

Tkachuk was decidedly having a less fun time now. He didn’t have much of an answer about the laughter over the idea of inviting the women’s team to the White House, saying Trump’s dig came at “a whirlwind of a moment.” Tkachuk also batted away people who thought they’d overheard him on a (real) locker room video screaming “close the northern border” —he said it wasn’t his voice and........

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