An American Story. A Canadian Media Breakdown.

Quinn Hughes: "The last time the men [won a gold medal] was 46 years ago." 

Hilary Knight: “And the last time we did that was two whole Olympics ago.” SNL February 28/ 2026

“Someone left this outside the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto this morning: a Quinn Hughes Vancouver Canucks jersey defaced with profanity-laced insults aimed at a 26 year old Olympic gold medal champion. This is Canada in 2026.”— Ted Bird.

If you’re waiting for the giant media pushback against entitled women hockey players tossing barbs on SNL you’ll be waiting a long, long time. Somehow the players on the men’s gold medal team bit their lower lip, took one for the nation on live from New York TV. And the frantic sports media corps could find nothing for which to blame Donald Trump.

Forget Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Modern sports press is a captive of Donald Trump Relativity. If you’re a mewling social justice warrior in the press box everything in the universe if now connected through the cantankerous U.S. president. 

The bombing of Iran is an adjunct to Trump’s connection to the Epstein files. Capturing Maduro from Venezuela is related to the deaths of two frothing ICE protestors. And now the celebration of the U.S. men’s hockey team is connected to stagnating financial approval in the polls. Or something like that.=

For some reason, Canada’s established gentry have a particular fever over him. Well before Trump jibed about Canada as a 51st state, the Laurentian elite that gave flibberty-gibbet Trudeau not one, not two, but three terms as PM has had a unique animus to him. The gall to invite the winning men’s team to the White House and the State of the Union? Heads are exploding, despite the attempts to calm the mob.

Team USA GM Bill Guérin called Trump’s comment “off-coloured” but then added, “There was nothing that was set out to be political. There was nothing that was meant to harm anybody. But people take it that way. What I can tell you is that, I’ll just say our group, we have unconditional love for our country. And what we did was for everybody.

“I don’t care what your political stance is, what your gender, race, view on anything is. I don’t care, this win was for you.” Maybe, but why let a good sulk go to waste? As Toronto radio host Greg Brady joked, “This so-called attempt to ‘liberate the Iranian people’ is obviously just a distraction for Trump to turn the attention away from Auston Matthews playing at home in Toronto this evening”.

Love Trump our hate Trump—and boy, does Robert DeNiro hate him— he is now the pole star in Canadian affairs, a plough bulldozing Confederation while levelling the border. Or so you’d think from some woman TSN reporter in Ottawa asking Senators captain Brady Tkachuk about Trump’s offhand reference to being impeached if her didn’t invite the women’s team. , “I know you supported the women’s team — I saw you watching their semifinal. Would you understand how they could feel pretty put down by that moment?”

When Tkachuk responded “I have no other comments than for the things that we control, and that was that we supported them and they supported us. You can’t control what other people say — that’s just life.” The reporter continued “Why would you laugh when they got invited?” Etc.

She was soon topped by Stephen Tustin: “The criticisms directed at the tone-deaf, immature, willfully underinformed (sic), priviliged (sic) U.S. men's hockey team are earned and justified. It's called accountability. They acted like spoiled jackasses, and are being treated as such. Accountability. #NHL"

Bruce Arthur: "Some U.S. men’s players apologized; even more talked about how much they respected the USA women’s team. What they didn’t seem to realize was that if you respect them and don’t apologize for the Trump debacle, it actually makes embracing Trump worse.”

Chris Selley: “How do you come back to Canada as Auston Matthews and stand in front of Canadian fans in Toronto and promote yourself and wear quite literally the maple leaf on your jersey, while at the same time supporting a Trump White House? I don’t know.”

@IanKennedyCK “Remember that they've all had plenty of time to speak out, to apologize for laughing, to condemn that type of misogyny, and to tout the achievement of USA's women's team. They haven’t."=

Liberal wind therapist Laura Babcock: “Canadian Men’s Hockey lost the Gold medal game but unlike the US Men’s team they didn’t lose their integrity.” 

This Leafs fan not happy with captain Matthews. “Trade him. I don't give a fuck if it's for a bag of used pucks, I want the spineless pedophile supporter gone.”

But you knew that already. For those who don't know how news works. The @USOlympic women's hockey team was expected to win. They made it close but still won gold. Excellent story, but not great. The men's hockey team was not expected to win. An underdog result is always better. Especially after first gold since 1980. Great story. 

Listening to butt-hurt liberals, the men should apologize for having the bigger story. Having struggle sessions with indignant liberal women reporters who are working the insult narrative. Madness. And the women? An off-hand comment in a noisy dressing room about being invited, just like the men, is too much to bear? Becuase Trump hates women athletes? Oh, like below.

This should have been a ten-minute media ripple. But Canada’s TDS sufferers insist it’s still a story because people are discussing it a week later. Been discussed by whom? Progressive media and echo chamber radicals online. But that’s how Canada’s UniParty media rolls these days. Somewhere Pierre Berton is appalled.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700