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The United States claimed their third Olympic men’s hockey title – and first since the Miracle on Ice team of 1980 – with a thrilling 2-1 overtime win over Canada in Sunday’s gold medal game at the Milano Cortina Games. In the third Olympic final meeting between the border rivals and the first since Sidney Crosby’s epochal golden goal in 2010, the Americans seized their moment to end a 46-year wait and dethrone the sport’s most decorated nation on its grandest stage.
Canada had been chasing a record-extending 10th gold medal in men’s ice hockey, but it was the United States who delivered when it mattered most through Jack Hughes’ winner less than two minutes into the extra period and a superhuman effort from goaltender Connor Hellebuyck, capping an unbeaten run through the first Olympic tournament to feature National Hockey League players in 12 years.
“I can’t even believe this,” said Hughes, the 24-year-old New Jersey Devils star, who who lost at least one of his teeth while absorbing a punishing hit in the third period. “I mean it’s such an unbelievable game, USA-Canada. Such a good game. There’s so many great players. We’re a great team. That’s exactly how we wanted it to go. We’re underdogs to Canada, [but we] beat them. It could have gone either way.”
The United States, greeted with a chorus of lusty boos when they took the ice for warm-ups, overcame a Canada side littered with NHL stars and a hostile crowd. It had already felt like there were more maple leaf shirts in the building and along the concourses in the build-up. From the earliest moments of the game, it sounded that way too.
The matchup in the final medal event of the Milano Cortina Olympics came one year after the North American rivals played twice at the height of political tensions between the countries in the 4 Nations Face-Off, the first international tournament to feature the NHL’s best players since 2016. The Americans won 3-1 in the round-robin contest played at Montreal’s Bell Centre that saw the US anthem booed and featured three fights in the first nine seconds, while Canada won the final 3-2 in overtime.
Similar extracurriculars were always unlikely on Sunday, given the automatic ejections for fighting under Olympic rules. Still, it took less than three minutes for tempers to flare as a snarl of players converged in front of the US net, trading not-so-subtle pleasantries and shoves as the crowd rose in a thunderous roar.
The US brought the intensity to their arch-rivals from the first shift, winning every loose puck battle amid warring chants of “U-S-A!” and “CAN-A-DA!”. But they didn’t manage a shot on goal until exactly six minutes in, when Matt Boldy skated in between a pair of red shirts before firing past Canada goaltender Jordan Binnington.
Canada’s first best look at an equalizer came midway through the second period off the stick of Connor McDavid, who burst in alone on a clean breakaway only to be turned away by Hellebuyck. Moments later, a holding call on Jake Guentzel handed the Canadians their first power play, and a hooking minor to Charlie McAvoy quickly turned it into 90 seconds of a two-man advantage. But the Americans’ penalty kill – which held a 100% record entering the night – stood firm once again.
The Canadians were outshooting the US by a 25-15 margin with two minutes before the second intermission when Cale Makar sent a tracer through Hellebuyck’s arm and leg pads, leveling the score at one goal apiece and setting the stage for the white-knuckle finale.
By early in the final stanza the US were being outshot by more than two to one and hanging on for dear life, their attack in shambles. But they were given a reprieve when the referees missed a blatant penalty for too many men on the ice shortly before a double-minor penalty on Canada’s Sam Bennett gave them a four-point power play with six minutes left in regulation. After the US failed to score, then killed a brief Canada one-man advantage for Hughes’ high-sticking, the game headed to an extra period of sudden-death three-on-three hockey.
It would be the 24-year-old Hughes – and the US – who delivered the knockout blow 1min 41sec into overtime, latching onto Zach Werenski’s feed and snapping a shot through Jordan Binnington’s legs, igniting a madcap vault from the American bench as Canada’s players stared into the awful stillness of what might have been.
The game was arguably the hottest ticket of the Milano Cortina Games and that was evident from the scenes outside the gates, where hordes of Canadian and American fans in hockey sweaters pounded beers and roared through songs and chants in glorious sunshine.
For days Italian media outlets had been aflutter with reports that Donald Trump would be jetting in for Sunday’s game and the closing ceremony in Verona. Beltway-watchers instead settled for FBI director Kash Patel, who arrived in Italy on Thursday and watched the US win alongside American snowboarder Nick Baumgartner from a hospitality suite perched above the lower bowl. Trump wasted little time feting the winners after Hughes’ decider. “Congratulations to our great U.S.A. Ice Hockey team. THEY WON THE GOLD. WOW!” he wrote on Truth Social, adding: “WHAT A GAME!”
The mania was no less intense back in North America, where authorities on both sides of the Canada-US border loosened alcohol laws to accommodate the early-morning puck drop. NBC executives were salivating after Friday’s semi-final between the US and Slovakia averaged 8.3m viewers, making it the most-watched non-gold-medal Olympic men’s hockey game in American history outside the 2002 semi-final between the US and Russia.
It was the third time the border rivals have played in the gold medal game and the first since 2010, when Crosby etched his name into Olympic lore by scoring in overtime to seal a 3-2 win over the Americans on home soil. The 38-year-old Crosby was still in the Canada squad four Olympics later, but he did not dress for Sunday game after suffering a knee injury in Wednesday’s quarter-final win over the Czech Republic.
Hellebuyck stopped 41 of the 42 shots he faced, improving on his tournament-best save percentage and goals against average. The US and Canada were two of only three teams in the Olympic tournament, along with quarter-finalists Sweden, made up exclusively of NHL players.
“Unbelievable game by Hellebuyck,” Hughes said. “He was our best player by a mile.”
As the US players celebrated on the ice, Werenski and Matthew Tkachuk skated through the bedlam carrying a No 13 jersey in tribute to Johnny Gaudreau, the USA and Columbus Blue Jackets player who was struck and killed by a car along with his brother in 2024.
Forty-six years to the day of the United States’ famous win over the Soviet Union in Lake Placid, the Americans were Olympic champions for a third time.
