Again residence with their gold medals, Boston Fleet gamers who suited up for the U.S. girls’s Olympic hockey group say they’re proud People still riding the high of victory and usually are not biting into President Trump’s joke.
Per week faraway from beating Canada within the gold medal recreation on the Milan Cortina Video games, smiles and laughter abounded on the Boston Sports activities Institute in Wellesley, with a trio of USA hockey gamers again at apply with the Fleet.
American hero Megan Keller, who clinched the gold medal with an time beyond regulation aim, advised reporters that she didn’t have a response to President Trump’s telephone name with the U.S. males’s group after it claimed gold over Canada.
Reasonably, the Fleet group captain referred to as the social media dialog across the interaction between the president and the boys’s group “unlucky.” Keller additionally centered on how uncommon it’s for each groups to win gold on the identical Olympics.
“However all I can say is I’ve by no means been extra proud to placed on the USA jersey,” Keller stated, “and I feel for lots of us, it’s an honor of a lifetime to symbolize our nation on the most important stage. We went over there with one factor on thoughts: Carry residence a gold medal for our nation.”
“That’s what ought to be highlighted: As a bunch, each males’s and girls’s, we had been in a position to do one thing that has by no means been carried out earlier than,” she added.
Speaking on a speakerphone within the postgame locker room, Trump prolonged an invite to the White Home to the boys’s group, then added, “We’re going to must deliver the ladies’s group, you do know that.” The president later joked that if he didn’t lengthen the invitation, he would in all probability be impeached.
Nonetheless driving the adrenaline of beating Canada to assert the USA males’s hockey’s largest win since 1980, gamers chuckled together with the president. Some see Trump’s joke as a backhand swipe on the girls’s group, whereas others see it as a shot at his political adversaries.
Whereas the overwhelming majority of the boys’s group flew to Washington on Tuesday and visited Trump within the White Home earlier than being company on the State of the Union, most of the girls’s gamers traveled again to their skilled or school golf equipment.
USA Hockey, which stated it was “honored” by the invitation, cited logistical points as the foremost hurdle that prevented the ladies’s group from stopping by the White Home.
Hilary Knight, who performed for Boston-based skilled groups for eight seasons throughout three completely different leagues, described Trump’s joke as “distasteful and unfortunate.” Knight, a two-time gold medalist in her first season in Seattle, holds an Olympic file for whole factors by a U.S. hockey participant, with 15 targets and 33 factors.
“And, I feel simply the best way girls are represented, it’s an amazing instructing level,” Knight stated on Wednesday, “and actually shines mild on how girls ought to be championed for his or her wonderful feats.”
Again in Boston, the 2 Bruins representatives on the U.S. males’s group have stated they want they reacted otherwise, with defenseman Charlie McAvoy apologizing on Thursday. He and goalie Jeremy Swayman, who spoke with reporters on Wednesday, highlighted the sturdy bond between the boys’s and girls’s groups.
Keller stated she and Jack Hughes, who scored the boys’s time beyond regulation gold-winning aim, have turn out to be shut buddies.
“I noticed Jack after I scored my aim, and he gave me a giant hug and congratulations,” Keller stated, “and I used to be fortunate sufficient do this for him after he scored his aim. We’re going to be gold medalists perpetually.”
Keller’s teammate Haley Winn, a key defenseman for the Fleet and the U.S. girls’s group, scored a aim and 4 factors throughout seven Olympic video games.
“It’s a giant social media matter proper now, as something is,” Winn stated on Thursday. “However on the finish of the day, we each went there to do our job, and we each bought that job carried out. … They had been tremendous supportive of us, got here to plenty of our video games, we went to their video games. They had been nothing however superior to us.”
Fleet head coach Kris Sparre stated he had not addressed the state of affairs together with his group, saying it could be a “disservice” to the “pleasure round our group.”
In his deal with, Trump stated plans had been within the works to have the ladies’s group go to the White Home, although it’s unclear when that would occur, USA Hockey stated. The group, although, has secured a date in July to have a good time its gold medal with rapper Flavor Flav in Las Vegas.
“These two groups had by no means gained a gold medal on the identical time,” Fleet GM Danielle Marmer stated of the boys’s and girls’s accomplishment. “It’s such a particular second, an unbelievable accomplishment, that something that detracts from that, for me, is pointless. The main focus actually ought to be about these gamers.”
The Related Press contributed to this report
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Boston Fleet goalie and USA Hockey gold medal winner Aerin Frankel speaks throughout a press convention, Thursday, on the Boston Sports activities Institute in Wellesley. (Mark Stockwell/Boston Herald)
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Boston Fleet goalie and USA Hockey gold medal winner Aerin Frankel speaks throughout a press convention, Thursday, on the Boston Sports activities Institute in Wellesley. (Mark Stockwell/Boston Herald)
