Opinion

The US Olympic Men’s Hockey Team Did It the Right Way

The US Olympic Men’s Hockey Team Did It the Right Way
Jack Hughes #86 of Team United States celebrates after their gold-medal win during the Men's Gold Medal match between Canada and the U.S. on day 16 of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic games at Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena in Milan, Italy, on Feb. 22, 2026. Elsa/Getty Images
Josh Hammer
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Commentary

If men’s basketball is the most popular and professional athlete-filled team sport at the quadrennial Summer Olympic Games, then men’s ice hockey is its Winter Olympic Games analogue. Every four years, the two-week Summer and Winter Olympics provide a respite, for NBA and NHL fans, from the annual domestic calendar. Stars who might normally be teammates instead pick up the jerseys of rival nations, competing against one another for love of home and hearth on the world’s grandest sporting stage. Each Olympic sport has had its iconic American triumphs too: Who can forget the 1992 basketball “Dream Team” in Barcelona, or the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” in Lake Placid?

Josh Hammer
Josh Hammer
Author
Josh Hammer is opinion editor of Newsweek, a research fellow with the Edmund Burke Foundation, counsel and policy advisor for the Internet Accountability Project, a syndicated columnist through Creators, and a contributing editor for Anchoring Truths. A frequent pundit and essayist on political, legal, and cultural issues, Hammer is a constitutional attorney by training. He hosts “The Josh Hammer Show,” a Newsweek podcast, and co-hosts the Edmund Burke Foundation's “NatCon Squad” podcast. Hammer is a college campus speaker through Intercollegiate Studies Institute and Young America's Foundation, as well as a law school campus speaker through the Federalist Society. Prior to Newsweek and The Daily Wire, where he was an editor, Hammer worked at a large law firm and clerked for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Hammer has also served as a John Marshall Fellow with the Claremont Institute and a fellow with the James Wilson Institute. Hammer graduated from Duke University, where he majored in economics, and from the University of Chicago Law School. He lives in Florida, but remains an active member of the State Bar of Texas.
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