During the 2024 hockey season, Jack Hughes, a center for the New Jersey Devils, got a small amount of publicity for coming out in favor of Pride Night when many NHL teams were rejecting the very idea of it. Two years late, Hughes, who scored the winning goal in the United States' amazing overtime win over Canada, was one of several U.S. Hockey players caught in a frozen smile when President Trump called their victorious locker room to congratulate them and, hey, while he was there, make an out of place (wink wink) joke about how, "Oh boy, now I gotta invite the women to the White House along with you guys."
Now, much has happened since those wild few days when both of our hockey teams won gold medals. For one thing, we're at war! But there are a few things left unsaid about this whole hockey thing and, anyway, I haven't figured out what to say about this strange war into which we entered quite suddenly, like kids deciding to go egg the opposing school's football field.
Anyone who thought Trump did the wrong thing with his comment about the women—and I trust that's the majority of you—would've hoped that the players somehow communicated their displeasure with our President's comment. By every account, the men's and women's hockey teams were strong supporters of each other. That was evident in the Saturday Night Live opener, which gathered together Hughes and his brother Quinn, along with two stars of the women's team: captain Hilary Knight and Megan Keller. They've kinda been on a hockey foursome over America ever since then, and it's been delightful to watch.
So, if the men supported the women so strongly, why the laugh-it-off reaction from the male players when Trump called? Well, really, what would we expect? A team full of itself right after winning a gold medal gets a phone call from the President. They're half drunk from winning, half drunk with relief, and literally half drunk from the Coronas they slugged right after the game. I know that's 1.5x drunk. I'm sure 80% of the team had no problem with what Trump said and that 20% who might've had a problem with it are trapped. Just as I don't want to overpraise Jack Hughes for his stance on Gay Pride Night, I don't want to overcriticize him and others for not reacting negatively to the Trump comment.
The players' failure to do so—nay, even the impossibility to do so given the moment—is at root the issue with this tireless custom of the Presidential phone call and the White House visit for sports champions. I've been on a few of them, the most memorable being the 1991 visit by the Chicago Bulls after they had won their first NBA Championship. The big news to come out of it was that Michael Jordan skipped the ceremony, not because of any political argument but because he wanted to play golf. But the real story was Jordan's teammate Craig Hodges. He showed up in a snow white dashiki and presented an 8-page letter to George H. Bush outlining his displeasure with the administration's handling of poor and minorities. Hodges says his action caused him to be blackballed from the league because teams were afraid of his political stances, and I have no doubt that is true.
But my larger point is that these presidential calls and visits have nothing to do with honoring teams. They are political calculation, whether it's a Democrat or Republican in the White House. The President is not honoring you, he's honoring himself by having you. You give him the power, not vice versa.
I'm not pretending it's a major issue whether or not teams continue to be invited to the White House; that's fine. But any player should be able to opt out for any reason because it is not a great patriotic honor to be invited. You're being invited to be a political prop.
