What to Know
After Donald Trump spoke to the U.S. men’s hockey team following their Olympic gold win at the 2026 Winter Olympics, no one is going to forget the locker room chatter caught on camera. In clips that surfaced across social media, Trump is heard congratulating the guys and gassing them up big time, only to make an offhand joke about including the women’s hockey team in a celebration with the men’s team. So after the U.S. men’s team got back home to the United States, and they were met with a lackluster response, they sort of had it coming.
The NHL posted a video of the team’s return on X (formerly Twitter) and wrote, “Team USA is officially back from the #MilanoCortina2026 #WinterOlympics.” And hey, we aren’t here to disparage a group of gold medal winners. But the fact that the women’s team also won gold in the same exact sport but received less accolades than the male team was just too much. Clearly. Otherwise, the men’s team might have been met with tons of cheers and celebration rather than a few “woohoos.”
There were only a handful of cheers from people at the airport welcoming back the hockey team.
Team USA is officially back from the #MilanoCortina2026 #WinterOlympics 🥇 pic.twitter.com/vEMOwms7nX
— NHL (@NHL) February 23, 2026
In the video, the men’s team arrives at a U.S. airport to light celebratory cheers from other people off-camera. Because of the honor of winning gold and being asked by Trump to attend the State of the Union address in person, you might expect these guys to have more of a hero’s welcome once they touched down on American soil again. But, yeah, that wasn’t the case at all.
As each player enters the terminal in the video, he is met with ether silence or a half-hearted cheer from someone. And to be fair, any cheers these hockey players hear in the video could be from family members rather than actual fans. They didn’t exactly stand up for the women’s team when Trump made a joke about the women’s hockey team to them on a locker room phone call, so it’s hard to feel for these particular players.
When it was posted elsewhere that hockey player Jack Hughes pushed his own luggage cart through the airport after arriving home in the U.S., someone commented to share that they don’t think anyone even knew who he was. In fact, by appearance alone, and without an announcement about who the hockey team is, most probably wouldn’t recognize them.
The “crowd went mild” for these guys after that Olympic win.
Of course, the best part about the hockey team’s not-so-triumphant return home, other than a lack of celebration IRL, are the reactions on X.
“How do you fumble generational aura in less than 24 hours?” One user commented on the X post. “Ask these guys.”
Someone else wrote, “Coming home to three people ‘woo’ing’ and realizing America has already moved on to the next headline.” Ouch, that one’s gotta hurt. Alright, so many it wasn’t even an official welcome party at the airport, but as someone else put it, the hockey team probably expected a lot more fanfare than they got.
That user wrote, “On a real note, you can tell the players were expecting a much greater reception, only to be met by a few casuals. Tough watch.”
