They may have taken different paths to get there, but the result is the same—a gold medal win and a star goalie who’ll never have to a buy a drink in his hometown again.
In 1980, the U.S. Men’s Hockey team produced the miracle on ice. That’s when a collection of college kids went up against a Soviet powerhouse and beat them on their way to winning gold.
In the years since, though, no American men’s hockey team has been able to win Olympic gold.
Until now.
On Sunday, the U.S. team defeated Canada in an overtime thriller. With the world watching and every hockey fan biting their nails, American Jack Hughes scored the winning goal in the extra frame and bedlam ensued.
But while that goal will make all the headlines, it’s all the ones American net-minder Connor Hellebuyck stopped that truly saved the day.
“It’s going to go down as one of the best performances of all time—it has to,” said teammate and NHL All-Star Matthew Tkachuk. “Right up there with Jimmy Craig [in 1980].”
Hockey fans remember the name Jimmy Craig. Like Hellebuyck for the 2026 team, Craig was the goaltending backbone of the 1980 American squad. Craig, with whom I wrote the book, Gold Medal Strategies, boasted an incredible knack for rising to the moment when it was needed.
Yet, that talent didn’t come out of nowhere.
What Craig knew (as you can read in the book – shameless plug!) was that preparation was the key to a successful moment. “I can always tell if a goalie is nervous and unprepared by how they catch the first shot taken at them,” Craig said in a call with me a few minutes after Sunday’s game in Milan. “If they’re fumbling it, I worry. But if they look like the Karate Kid, snatching it out of the air, you know they’re ready. From the game’s start, Connor was ready! His body language was fantastic”
The goaltender for the 2026 American team has seen high highs and low lows. The current Vezina and Hart Trophy holder in the NHL, Hellebuyck endured a tough playoffs last season for the Winnipeg Jets. He had to be pulled three times in the opening round against St. Louis.
But all of the greats know that their journeys don’t end with a speed bump in the road.
“Those critics,” said Hellebuyck from Milan, “they can keep writing. But they don’t understand goaltending. They don’t understand my game. I know what I’m putting forward. I know what I’m building. These are the moments that prove it.”
Let that sink in for a second. As sports fans, so often we look at our favorite players on the television screen and we think of them as finished products. But that’s not what Hellebuyck sees of himself. He sees a work in progress—he knows there is always more room to grow.
He wants to always be building something. That’s powerful.
Sunday was the third time in Olympic history that the Americans had faced Canada in the gold medal game. In the previous two matchups, Canada prevailed. But that narrative meant nothing in the USA locker room.
They’d won before in 1980, they could do it again.
The American team victory on Sunday marks an important moment—not just in the country’s sports history, but it also allows us a chance to stop and take stock of our own lives. Was there a point in time when we didn’t believe in our own potential, in our own progress?
Did we listen to the critics a little too closely? Did we give them too much credit?
That can happen.
But so can shocking the world.
Craig and now Hellebuyck know what that means.
There’s no one way to become a gold medalist—there’s no one way to win gold. The only signpost is preparation. That’s what will help you rise to the moment when called upon.
“[Hellebuyck] was our best player by a mile,” said U.S. teammate Matt Boldy. “He’s an absolute stud. He wants to be in those moments. He wants to make the saves. And he did just that, so he was definitely our MVP.”
Offered teammate Dylan Larkin, “That guy should never buy a drink in [his home] state of Michigan ever again.”
13-Time New York Times Bestselling Author and Hall of Fame Keynote Speaker
Don Yaeger
