God, I’m sorry. I’ll see you next Sunday.

So said more than one American yesterday morning at 8:10 ET as they settled in for the final event of the Winter Olympics in Italy — the gold medal hockey match between Team USA and Team Canada.

It didn’t disappoint.

From the drop of the first puck, you felt the clamminess in your palms because you knew this wasn’t just any hockey game or any Olympic event. You jumped out of your chair when a full-speed Matt Boldy split two Canadians by popping the puck up onto the blade of his stick and Tiger Woodsing it forward before beating Canadian goalkeeper Jordan Binnington with the game’s first goal. Then you felt a sense of foreboding as the Canadians — whose team included the NHL’s first-, second-, and fourth-leading scorers — began to impose their will, far outshooting us throughout the game, including 19-8 in the second period. Yes, the Yanks kept clinging to that 1-0 lead, but it seemed only a matter of time before the walls fell in.

Connor Hellebuyck, though, had other ideas. The American keeper singlehandedly kept us in the game with one crucial save after another, including a preposterous behind-the-back stick job to deny Canada’s Devon Toews from point-blank range. On another occasion, with Hellebuyck on his knees in the middle of a wild scrum, it was his teammate, defenseman Charlie McAvoy, who batted down a certain goal that the Canadians’ Tom Wilson had jabbed over Hellebuyck’s shoulder. Hey, it’s a team game.

With the game tied at 1-1 after regulation, it went to sudden death, with three skaters per side instead of five. Here, we felt that the slick-skating Americans had at least a slugger’s chance. And sure enough. After withstanding a furious Connor McDavid rush, Jack Hughes beat the Canadians’ Cale Makar to a loose puck and headed up ice with teammate Zach Werenski, who fed Hughes beautifully, who then beat Binnington “five hole” with the Golden Goal.

JACK HUGHES DELIVERS AMERICA’S GOLDEN MOMENT IN OVERTIME. pic.twitter.com/4foFDOri53

— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) February 22, 2026

A few minutes earlier, Hughes had been spittin’ Chiclets from a nasty high-stick to the mouth courtesy of Canada’s Sam Bennett. But were Hughes to have been offered the trade of a couple of choppers for an Olympic gold medal, he’d have crossed-checked his grandma for the opportunity.

“This is all about our country right now,” said Hughes in a viral post-game interview. “I love the USA. I love my teammates. It’s unbelievable. The USA hockey brotherhood is so strong. We had so much support from ex-players. I’m so proud to be American today.”

Hughes wasn’t done. Asked how they managed to get it done, he immediately credited others. “Unbelievable game by Hellebuyck,” he said. “He was our best player tonight by a mile. Unreal game by our team. Just a ballsy, gutsy win. That’s American hockey right there. That’s a great Canadian team, but we’re USA, we’re so proud to be Americans. Tonight was all for the country.”

If that doesn’t give you chills, you might check your pulse.

As for Hughes’s missing teeth, he credited — what else? — American dentistry. “I’m lucky I’m from the best country in the world, and we’ve got great dentists there, too. I’m lucky I’m American, and they’re gonna fix me right up.”

Ultimately, it was good ol’ American grit that prevailed on the exact day when, 46 years ago, a group of American college kids engineered the greatest upset in hockey history, the Miracle on Ice, by beating the unbeatable Soviet Red Army team in Lake Placid, New York. There was nothing miraculous about this year’s team beating the Canadians — unless you consider Connor Hellebuyck standing on his head for 61 minutes and 41 seconds a miracle — but that doesn’t make the victory any less sweet. While there exists a ton of respect between the Canadian and American players, some of whom are NHL teammates, our two countries have — perhaps you’ve noticed — been somewhat at odds of late.

“You be the judge of who was the better team today,” said a stunned and embittered Canadian, Nathan MacKinnon, who was on the ice when Hughes notched his game-winner, and who missed a chance to put Canada up 2-1 in the third period when he missed a chip shot from point-blank range on the left side of a wide-open U.S. net. I suspect he slam dunks that puck 99 times out of 100, but not yesterday. When the hopes and dreams of a hockey-crazed nation are sitting on your shoulders, it can affect even the surest hands in the game.

I wonder if anyone on the Soviets’ awesome Red Army team tried to claim MacKinnon’s weak-saucy consolation prize 46 years ago. I wonder if Fetisov or Maltsev or Kharlamov or Tretiak said, after the Miracle on Ice, “Yeah, we lost the gold, but we were the better team out there.”

Nyet. The better team was the American team. And they proved it by beating MacKinnon and his fellow Canadians, 2-1. Indeed, the Americans swept the hockey golds in Milan, with Team USA women having beaten, yes, Canada by an identical 2-1 score in sudden death a few days earlier.

As the merciless crew at The Babylon Bee quipped, “Communists once again suck at hockey.”

Donald Trump called the team immediately afterward, and you could hear the joy in his voice. “Congratulations,” he said. “That was an unbelievable game. … I want to shake hands with everybody, but I gotta shake hands with that goalie.”

And if you’d thought you’d seen it all, I give you FBI Director Kash Patel, there in the Team USA locker room afterward, drinking a beer and singing Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” with his fellow Americans.

Yesterday, we were all Americans. And we were treated to a spectacular game by a group of patriotic young Americans who — rather than bad-mouthing their country or competing for the commies — put America unequivocally first.