Winning it for Johnny Hockey: Team USA wins a historic gold and honors a fallen teammate

By Dana O’Neil, CNN

Milan (CNN) — Outside the arena here, it felt like all of Canada had arrived, not so much for a hockey game but for a statement.

This, this sport played on ice, belongs to us. You Americans may keep your football; we get hockey.

And so, they sipped their beer, using cans and sippy cups and bottles, and chugged their Canadian whiskey and wore their red and took over Milan, spilling into seats with their maple leaf flags hanging and lofted into the air.

Amid simmering tensions between the United States and its usually cordial neighbors to the north, a hockey game had taken on all sorts of subtext and meaning. But at its core, it was about hockey. About ownership of a sport that has sent the Stanley Cup on a tour of the US, in Florida and Las Vegas of all places, not resting at home in Canada since 1993. About rosters equalized by NHL players finally delivering true bragging rights and settling a score.

Except the US had its share of emotion in this one, too. Subtler, perhaps, but even more meaningful.

Since they arrived in Italy, the Americans have hung a jersey in their locker room. It belongs to Johnny Gaudreau, who would have been proudly wearing it had he not been tragically killed in a New Jersey biking accident in 2024. Gaudreau’s parents, Guy and Jay, his wife, Meredith and his oldest boys, including John Jr., who just turned two, came to Milan to represent Johnny and to support the teammates he loved so much. The team, in turn, made sure the Gaudreau family was part of their Olympic experience

Blood, indeed, is thicker than water. In a taut game that did the rarest of all things – actually delivered on the hype – Team USA claimed its first gold medal since the Miracle kids of 1980, winning two minutes into three-on-three overtime.

Zach Werenski stripped Nathan McKinnon – who had missed a gloriously open net with 10 minutes left in the game that could have put Canada ahead – near the right face-off circle. He then zipped a pass to Jack Hughes, who lost a tooth courtesy of a third-period high stick from Sam Bennett. Hughes crossed Jordan Binnington to his right and then slipped the puck through the five-hole and into history.

As he celebrated, Hughes flashed his gap-toothed smile that now can have a golden replacement.

The US version of the Golden Goal sent the Americans into delirious bedlam, crashing and collapsing into each other on the boards directly in front of the section, it turned out, that included the Gaudreau family.

Minutes later, Brady Tkachuk and Werenski brought Gaudreau’s jersey out on the ice and skated around with it. Werenski and Dylan Larkin fetched Johnny’s boys and brought them to the ice to make the family picture complete. When it was time for the national anthem, the players wrapped their arms around each other’s shoulders, but also kept Gaudreau’s jersey aloft.

“We talked about playing for him, making him proud,’’ Werenski said. “We did that, and so it was super special to see them all on the ice. It was a huge party. There’s really no words for it.’’

Not exactly a miracle

Words, in fact, don’t do it justice. This is a game turned better in images – of the joy etched on American fans and the agony writ large on Team Canada. As they politely accepted their silver medals, the players looked more like they were being wreathed in garlic.

That the U.S. won its first gold medal since 1980 on the same day that the Americans upset the Soviet Union is an epic historical sandwich, but the implications of the games are hardly the same.

The 1980 version were a bunch of upstart college kids who no one saw coming; they were made for Disney. This team, comprised of the hockey elite, was not out to make a “Miracle.” It was out to get rid of an albatross.

There is a real rivalry here, and the reason why wise politicians across Canada and in New York rewrote their alcohol sales to welcome people in for an early cold one, and one 81-year-old doctor from Canada told a Dutch journalist that he happily dropped $6,000 for his ticket.

It’s been ratcheted up by politics, with empty threats of claiming Canada as the 51st state and crippling tariffs that have soured relationships between normally hospitable people. That same doctor has stopped visiting Florida because of the current political climate in the US.

But on the ice, there really wasn’t much of a rivalry, at least not in the Olympics. Canada has won 15 of 19 meetings all time between the two in the Olympics, including a 4-1 record in Games that include NHLers. The US won a round robin game in Vancouver in 2010; Canada went on to win the gold on Sidney Crosby’s golden goal.

Despite the equal number of NHL bodies, the Americans still carried their futility into this game. One fan in the stands summed it up succinctly to his buddy, “Time for little brother to get a reminder.’’

In truth, Canada dictated play for much of the game, peppering goalie Connor Hellebuyck with 42 shots. Yet despite being the aggressors from the jump, they couldn’t solve the riddle of Hellebuyck. The Winnipeg Jets goalie has won the Hart and the Vezina Awards but his 1-9 playoff record, which includes a severe dip in his save percentage, has left plenty wondering if he could win the biggest one.

Hellebuyck proves a point

But at 32, he is hardly worried about what people think. So calm was Hellebuyck on the bus ride to the rink, he fell asleep. “Something about that bus, I get a little snoozy,’’ he said.

He did not exactly sleepwalk and instead has now added an Olympic gold medal to his collection. “

I came into this game, the biggest game of my career, and I wasn’t really nervous,’’ he said. “The second I woke up, I felt like I was doing everything right, and every step I took, it was like this felt right.’’

Three-on-three is not the best way to determine a gold medal winner but despite Canada’s offensive onslaught, it felt like it could be America’s advantage.

While Hellebuyck was rejecting shot after shot, Bennington wasn’t nearly as busy. He took just 26, and in the open game of three-on-three overtime, shots come in a flurry. Hellebuyck was ready for it. Bennington was not.

People will now search for deeper meaning from this game, eyeing perhaps the same sort of burst to hockey in the US that the Raptors helped bring to Canada in hoops. It could happen. It would be lovely. It is a conversation for another day.

Some moments are big because, at their heart, they are incredibly small. There will be celebrations and chest bumping across the US, and yes maybe scores of kids will imagine themselves as Jack Hughes just as their grandpas dreamed of being Mike Eruzione.

But when Team USA left the ice, still giddy with victory and rightly proud of what they had accomplished, they thought not just of what they had done but of the man they’d done it for.

“(Johnny) touched everybody that’s on that ice,’’ Brady Tkachuk said. “That’s why we wanted to show the Gaudreau family that he was so near and dear to us, and that, you know, we miss him greatly. But we did this for him. That’s what this was about.’’

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