Who was the unsung hero in United States’ gold medal win?
Team USA has finally done it, earning Olympic gold in the men’s hockey tournament for the first time since 1980 with a 2-1 overtime win over Team Canada in Sunday’s gold medal game.
Goalie Connor Hellebuyck stole the show, holding a buzzing Canadian attack to just one goal, and Jack Hughes was immortalized with his overtime winner, but plenty of other Americans came up big when it mattered most.
On Sunday’s Daily Faceoff Olympic postgame show, hosts Tyler Yaremchuk, Jonny Lazarus and Jeff Marek along with co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed who the unsung heroes were in the United States’ gold-winning effort.
Jeff Marek: I mentioned on the top, Jaccob Slavin as well. We’ll just go sort of right down the line, and guys, feel free to jump in on all these topics. But who is the unsung guy for everybody here? For me it was Jaccob Slavin, who had ice water in his veins all game long. No panic threshold whatsoever. We should be used to Jaccob Slaven playing like this very quietly. No headlines. He’s not going on Kimmel. I thought Jaccob Slavin, right there right after Conor Hellebuyck, was sort of a real unsung hero.
Jonny Lazarus: You know what, I thought Charlie McAvoy had a hell of a tournament, hell of a game. He makes that play on the doorstep behind Hellebuyck, I think it may have been MacKinnon… That’s another scoring chance late in the game where McAvoy gets behind Hellebuyck… I mean Nathan MacKinnon, I’ve got to feel for him, man. Like the amount of opportunities he missed in that game, like that wide open net again in the third period, and you knew he wanted to be the hero right? Crosby has his goal, McDavid has his goal in Four Nations. MacKinnon definitely wanted that to be his moment. But Charlie McAvoy came up huge in so many different ways in this tournament that is pretty much unsung… Quinn Hughes got a lot of the shine offensively, but McAvoy the physical presence blocking shots, PK-ing, and doing all those little things and while Slavin had a big game too, I think McAvoy was a guy who you know went under the radar a little bit throughout the tournament that was stellar.
Carter Hutton: On a difference of a playmaker… you have a one-on-two in the first period that ends up in the back of the net, and it gets them to overtime, right? That was really the only offense they created. So Matt Boldy with a world class play against the top D-pairing in Canada. You can make the argument, you know, a mistake by the D-pairing, a save you need to make, but it’s still a play that Matt Boldy makes on the biggest stage in the world. A guy that isn’t a household name when you talk about Jack Eichel and Auston Matthews and all these players on the United States that get a lot more credit. Matt Boldy is no surprise to us that follow the NHL with a fine-tooth comb. We understand how good Boldy is, but he just did it on the world stage scoring a big goal.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…