To be a U.S. Olympian is to represent the best that your country has to offer. That sounds extremely lofty when it's written out like that, but I think that's really how it works, ideally, if you're taking in the best possible message from NBC's explicitly patriotic broadcast. Even I can feel it, in my most big-hearted moments, particularly after I've watched the figure skating events: Alysa Liu's infectious joy, or Ilia Malinin's humility in heartbreak. America is filled with optimistic people who are great at a lot of different things, they make me believe. It gets me feeling good about a place that I call home, which is kind of hard to do nowadays.
Heading into the Olympics, male hockey players were enjoying an unprecedented streak of great PR. Heated Rivalry, the TV show that captivated North America with steamy gay hockey-player sex, is only the tip of the iceberg for the whole hockey romance phenomenon, which uses the NHL as inspiration for a fairy-tale world where its players are dreamy lovers with innocent souls. In the universe of Heated Rivalry, you could build a Cup-winning top line out of openly gay active pro hockey players, even though the NHL has never had one, and a certain amount of wishful thinking also propels the hetero-themed books I've read in this genre. In Mile High, for example, the league's most notorious bad boy (who plays for Chicago of all places) is, beneath the rough exterior, a real sweetie of a boyfriend who just needs healthy support as he processes his parental trauma. And in Kiss And Don't Tell, a young woman facing car trouble has to spend the night in a remote cabin with five male players, but it turns out they act about as threatening to her as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
These books are very good at accomplishing what they set out to do, but it was a strange contrast to read them as someone whose only prior association with hockey players and sex was horrid stories of misogyny and assault. Hockey culture is rotten, but these stories offer a kind of escapist hope: What if it's not? What if the flesh-and-blood players on the ice are just like these boys on the page?
For a sizable portion of the country, particularly the fans of these kinds of books, the Trump administration is defined by its association with the abuse of women. Even if you can't recite every incident by heart, the overwhelming aura surrounding the White House is one of chauvinist impunity, and it shows in everything from Trump's judicial nominees to his cabinet to his choice of friends. In the fantasy world of hockey romance, the male protagonists modeling good masculine behavior would be strong enough to call out actions and remarks that degrade women. The Americans in the NHL are not quite so impressive.
Coming off Heated Rivalry, with the massive exposure of the Olympics spotlighting the most talented group of American men ever assembled for this particular tournament, the timing was perfect for new frontiers in hockey fandom. All that these attractive, gold-winning players had to do was not say or do anything that would make a bunch of fans believe that they didn't respect women. They lasted just a few minutes into the off-ice celebration.
If letting Kash Patel film his own personal segment for "My Wish," wasn't embarrassing enough, the team was also caught on camera laughing at a joke from a speakerphoned President Trump that basically stated that it would be a drag to have to invite the women's team along with them to D.C. Lest one think that this crack-up was just an awkward faux pas brought on by the inherent weirdness of listening to a demented world leader ramble at you from another continent, the vast majority of the team accompanied Trump in the White House and appeared as his guests at the State Of The Union speech on Tuesday, where Trump said he'd give the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Winnipeg Jets goaltender Connor Hellebuyck. The ones who returned to their teams on time got some social media cred for avoiding the speech, but they've had nothing of substance to say about the experience.
“We just won the gold medal and things are going on so I don’t really remember what he said," Kyle Connor said. "It’s such a whirlwind, just celebrating.”
If any player's suffered the most reputational damage from this controversy, it's Jack Hughes. He was the archetypal Olympic hero on Sunday morning, kicking off the celebration with a game-winning OT goal and providing an iconic image with his bloody, chipped-tooth grin. Hughes is also, quite frankly, adorable in way that fits perfectly with the hockey-romance fantasy. He comes from a by-all-accounts loving family steeped in the sport, including a mom who works for the women's national team, a brother as an NHL teammate, and another brother on an opposing franchise. He's got this very soft, shy voice, and cute hair, and an ability to speak about Pride Nights without sounding unsupportive (even if he seems terrified to say the word "gay" out loud). But Hughes tanked both his boy-band charisma and status as an American hero, at least for progressive fans, with his very defensive response to questions about his new closeness with Trump.
"Everyone is giving us backlash for all the social media stuff today. People are so negative out there, and they are just trying to find a reason to put people down and make something out of almost nothing," was one thing that Hughes said on Monday. Another answer he gave: "Everything is so political. We're athletes. We're so proud to represent the U.S. When you get the chance to go to White House and meet the president, we're proud to be Americans, and that's so patriotic."
It's naive to think that athletic success and personal virtue go hand and hand. The lofty ideals of the Olympics don't survive an honest look at the world around them. But still, I think I speak for a lot of hockey fans when I say it would have been nice if these guys had tried to seem a little more decent—at least the Hugheses and others, to keep the Tkachuks looking more like outliers. By not even doing the bare minimum to disassociate from a regime that terrorizes immigrants and demeans women, they make it impossible for any fan with conviction to return to the NHL feeling more excited (or "excited," wink wink) to watch these guys than they were before. They don't seem like the best this country's got, or men who deserve the benefit of the doubt that they'll stick up for what's right. They're the best hockey players, sure. But they also sound pretty ignorant and confused. Well, a lot of Americans are like that, too, I guess.
