PWHL
“Girls aren’t lower than, and their achievements should not be overshadowed by the rest aside from how nice they’re.”
Each the U.S. males’s and girls’s hockey groups left the 2026 Winter Olympics at Milano-Cortina with gold medals. Each applications captured their third Olympic gold after defeating Canada in time beyond regulation by an identical 2-1 scores.
However, within the aftermath of Workforce USA’s triumph on the ice in Italy, a lot of the discourse surrounding each groups over the previous few days has revolved round President Donald Trump’s joke made on the expense of the ladies’s hockey staff — and the U.S. males’s staff’s response to the comment.
After the US males’s hockey staff bested Canada in time beyond regulation via Jack Hughes’ golden goal, video captured within the People’ dressing room confirmed Trump inviting the lads’s staff to Washington, D.C. for the State of the Union handle.
As a part of the invitation for the lads’s hockey staff, Trump made a joke in regards to the girls’s staff — which gained gold on Thursday as a part of a record-setting run by means of the Olympic subject.
“I have to inform you, we’re going to need to convey the ladies’s staff, you do know that,” Trump stated, including that he’d “in all probability be impeached” if he didn’t invite the ladies’s staff. A number of of the lads’s staff gamers had been captured laughing at Trump’s remark in a now-viral video.
Workforce USA captain and former Boston Fleet ahead Hilary Knight addressed Trump’s remark and the response from the US males’s hockey staff on Wednesday throughout an interview on ESPN’s “SportsCenter.”
“I assumed it was kind of a distasteful joke, and sadly that’s overshadowing loads of the success, the success of simply girls on the Olympics carrying for Workforce USA and having superb gold medal feats,” Knight stated of Trump’s comment.
“We’re simply specializing in celebrating the ladies in our room, the extraordinary efforts, and proceed to have a good time three gold medals in program historical past in addition to the double gold for each males’s and girls’s on the identical time. And actually not detract from that with a distasteful joke.”
Whereas the US males’s staff met with Trump on the White Home on Tuesday before making an appearance at the State of the Union, the US girls’s staff declined Trump’s invitation to his speech at the US Capitol.
“We’re sincerely grateful for the invitation prolonged to our gold medal-winning U.S. Girls’s Hockey Workforce and deeply admire the popularity of their extraordinary achievement,” Team USA said in a statement, per The Athletic. “Because of the timing and beforehand scheduled educational {and professional} commitments following the Video games, the athletes are unable to take part. They had been honored to be included and are grateful for the acknowledgment.”
Trump claimed throughout his speech on Tuesday that the U.S. girls’s staff could be visiting with him “quickly.” No formal plans have been introduced.
Chatting with reporters on Wednesday, Bruins and Workforce USA goaltender Jeremy Swayman expressed regret over the team’s reaction to Trump’s joke.
“We must always have reacted in another way. We all know that,” Swayman stated. “We’re so excited for the ladies’s staff. We now have a lot respect for the ladies’s staff, and to share that gold medal with them is one thing that we’re without end grateful for. And now that we’re house, we get to share that collectively without end and see the unimaginable assist that now we have from the USA and sharing this unimaginable gold medal.”
Knight echoed an analogous sentiment in regards to the mutual respect between each groups, albeit noting that US males’s response was dissapointing.
“I feel there’s a real stage of assist there and respect,” Knight stated. “I feel that’s being overshadowed by a fast lapse. I feel the fellows had been in a tricky spot, so I feel it’s a disgrace this storyline and narrative has form of blown up and overshadowing that connection and real curiosity in each other and cheering one another on.”
The US girls’s hockey staff largely dominated in Milan, outscoring opponents, 33-2, and posting 5 shutout victories en path to a 7-0 file within the worldwide match.
Knight, showing in her last Olympics, scored the game-tying purpose towards Canada within the last two minutes of regulation — setting the stage for Knight’s former Fleet teammate Megan Keller to net the golden goal in overtime.
For Knight, the discourse over Trump’s remark and the lads’s staff’s response stands as a lesson for a lot of.
“I feel it’s a very good studying level, to essentially deal with how we discuss girls, not solely in sport however in trade,” Knight stated. “Girls aren’t lower than, and their achievements shouldn’t be overshadowed by the rest aside from how nice they’re.”
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