It’s been a while since I posted here. I originally intended to do a bit of a check-in on Washington during the NHL’s Olympic break, looking at every Capital’s performance this season and what improvements and adjustments would be necessary to squeak into the playoffs. I still have that in my drafts, outlined and partially complete, where it’ll probably stay. I don’t think I had very much to say that I don’t already say during and after the games themselves. I used the break to mostly get away from the sport, only watching maybe one and a half women’s games and a single period of men’s. Sunday drew me back in, though. Not because of the US making the gold medal game or the über-hyped USA-CAN matchup, I really didn’t care about anything Olympic other than passively hoping for Martin Fehérváry, Logan Thompson, and Tom Wilson to do well and not get injured. What got my attention was the aftermath. I’m not even sure if I can find something coherent to say, and it surely won’t flow beautifully, but it feels like something should be said.
First, the team celebrates in the locker room with beer and abandon. That’s to be expected and was certainly earned. What rubbed many the wrong way in that was seeing the team rub shoulders with FBI director Kash Patel. After the Bureau pushed back on accusations that he was there on a personal trip, it sure seemed like he took full advantage of the opportunity to hang out with some stars. It wouldn’t be the first time he used government resources to do this, if that’s the real reason he was there. He’s used our money to fly to Las Vegas and Miami to attend UFC fights, request executive protection for his nearly-20-years-junior girlfriend (and fly to visit her in Nashville), hang out with Republican donors, and, as eagle-eyed Capitals fans already know, follow the Caps around while Alex Ovechkin was chasing down Wayne Gretzky’s goal record. All that aside, all of his conspiracy theory advocacy and other pre-FBI nonsense aside, his tenure as director has still been awful. Even the far right doesn’t appreciate how poorly he handled the Epstein files (which contain mention of Capitals’ owner Ted Leonsis, by the way, which is something we’ll have to grapple with another time). He fired agents who dared do their job and assist in investigating Donald Trump. He’s generally mismanaged agents and funds left and right. Do I expect hockey players to know any of that? No, not really. If they did, do I think they would care in hindsight? Also not really. If that was all it was, I think it would be a bit of a non-story. “Guy from the FBI parties with drunk NHLers” only really matters to a select few, and I wouldn’t even include myself in that group. The clownish antics of the federal government just don’t move me, and general unawareness of the country’s goings-on from athletes is to be expected.
“Helle, say hi to him.”
“How ya doin, Don?”
Things got a lot less defensible when the “boys” took a call from President Donald Trump. Before 2017, it wasn’t much of a political statement to talk to the president, or visit the White House. Republican, Democrat, the Overton window hadn’t quite shifted enough to make it a capital-T Thing. Respect for the office was easier to see as warranted when the person in the office had that respect for it too. That’s not my endorsement of any number of horrible views or policies that came before then, but that’s the way the majority saw it, right or wrong. Now, though, we’re dealing with something very much not normal. The authoritarianism, fascism, racism, sexism, et cetera that has been shouted from the bully pulpit by Trump and his underlings is unlike anything we’ve seen in generations in America. Anyone willingly in his orbit at this point knows exactly what formulation of evil they’re okay with, regardless of how politically aware they are or how much it affects them. I’m not linking things here the way I did before because you don’t need sources for this stuff. You live it.
“We’re giving the State of the Union speech on Tuesday night; I can send a military plane or something, but if you would like to…” Trump starts to stumble over his words as he invites the men to the address and then the White House on Wednesday (the day NHL games resume), but the team responds with vigor. “We’re in,” followed by a chorus of “YEAH,” they shout over him. After a little more banter and crosstalk, and a “Thank you Mr. President” from behind camera, we hear Trump say “We have to – I must tell you, we’re gonna have to bring the woman’s [sic] team, you do know that.” Someone starts saying the word “absolutely,” almost sounding sincere, but i cut off by everyone laughing hysterically. Jack Hughes doubles over, holding his gold medal close to his body. “I do believe I probably would be impeached, okay?” More laughter. The rest of the call is relatively unremarkable.
Everyone chose to huddle around Kash Patel’s phone to talk to the president. They laughed at his jokes, showed him deference, and enjoyed his (remote) company. Auston Matthews, Mexican-American, laughed with the man tasking ICE with rounding up people that look like his mother Ema, whether or not they’re violent criminals or even in the country illegally. Quinn and Jack Hughes, sons of Ellen Weinberg-Hughes (a women’s team development consultant who helped them win a silver medal as a player at the 1992 IIHF World Championship), found it hilarious to have to begrudgingly invite the gold medalists from the women’s team to hang out with the gold medalist men. Quinn, Matt Boldy, and Brock Faber represent the Minnesota Wild, who play about eleven miles from the locations of where Renée Good and Alex Pretti were murdered last month. Faber even talked about how “you hate to see things like this” in the wake of the killings. Trump downplayed them and threw mud on the victims’ names, but that was apparently lost on the three. I could go on. All of these men have women in their lives, many athletes in their own right; surely they all consider members of various minority communities friends. None of that kept them from enjoying that call.
Hockey players, by necessity, tend to be born into wealthy families. Parents are paying thousands of disposable dollars to keep their kids in AAA hockey, but even the lower levels almost always require hundreds of dollars worth of equipment that will be outgrown, worn out, or outright broken through normal use. There are organizations working on making this more equitable (shoutout to the NHL/NHLPA and Washington Capitals for the Future Caps initiative that gives first-time players free equipment and lessons, and I assume other teams do similar things), but by and large, the players you see on TV come from means. Wealthier people and families in the US tend to identify more as Republicans and/or conservatives. Ergo, hockey players are usually coming from insulated and conservative backgrounds. Combining that with the bro-ish and toxic culture of the sport (check out We Breed Lions by Rick Westhead for a dense and saddening primer), we get a lot of NHLers with at best questionable personal politics. A lot (the majority?) seem to be casual Barstool conservatives, not necessarily actively hateful of anyone but lacking any sort of intellectual curiosity and generally putting on the red hat when it’s time for them to pick a side. Perceived masculinity and affability trump empathy and sensibility, pun only half intended. When pressed, though, they tend to generally support the popular causes. Most players will use pride tape on the one night a year it’s expected, they’ll wear the special jerseys in their walk-ins (the NHL has banned their use in warm-ups, let alone during games, because of a few vocal objectors including the Staals). This is a bit of dissonance that I don’t think many of them have even realized exists, and I think it can act as synecdoche. These guys mostly aren’t the type to vocalize any sort of bigotry, and probably would bristle at being called part of any problem, but will readily laugh at Trump’s goofy speeches and slogans and will throw him a vote two or three times because of the (R) next to his name, if they even bother voting. The politics of the average American tend toward inscrutable, the politics of the average NHLer might be even more so.
I say all that not to try to call them out or to place myself above them. I certainly don’t agree with the views or expressions in question, but I don’t agree with most people’s views. My personal politics are more radical than will ever be accepted in mainstream discourse, and I have dozens of friends who don’t align with me on some or most issues. I think people can disagree and get past it. I think people can fuck up and grow. I don’t think you have to be an ideologically pure person who happens to always agree with me in order to be acceptable. In the election cycles I’ve been eligible to vote in, I’ve voted every time, up and down the ballot, but I never once voted for a candidate who would have fit those criteria. I think that’s okay, if not often frustrating. The point is, I’m not looking to anyone to be paragons, let alone athletes. I don’t need role models; I’m an adult and my compass points toward my own morals, not someone else’s. At most, it’s something I consider when buying a new jersey. Athletes on my favorite teams are entertainers first and foremost. Their contribution to me and my life is how well they can entertain me through being good at their chosen sport. I’m okay with the fact that many of them don’t vote the way I do, or prioritize the things I do.
I should probably also note that I don’t think this is isolated to the American team, they were just the ones given the opportunity to do this. I don’t think I’m a fan of the one virtuous team, I’m not Canadian and don’t think that players for Hockey Canada (or any other country) are any better of people, I’m sure plenty of Caps and Canadians are the exact same. We’ve already seen TJ Oshie hard launch his affiliation, followed by hanging out with Trump and Elon Musk. It makes it all the worse that we have to hear his insipid commentary during local and national broadcasts. I feel bad for his daughters, and I wish he wasn’t still in the fold. Hearing the voices of him and Dino Ciccarelli is aggravating. I don’t have any sort of organizational or national pride informing my views here.
I think a line has to be drawn somewhere. I think chumming it up with this president, who is actively doing by far the most overtly fascist things we’ve seen here in living memory, is beyond that line. I am going to look at these players differently off the ice from now on, until and unless they say something that shows they understand the meaning and impact of this and why it isn’t okay and that they’re taking steps to do something to make up for it. I don’t expect that, even if it’s the least they could do, but it’d be nice. Jack Hughes has already doubled down, saying this is all “almost nothing” and that the group is “super excited” and “so proud…no matter what your views are” to go to the White House.
It’s made more impactful to many because some of these players were seen as “safe,” or at least generally well-liked as people. Quinn Hughes is the lovable bookworm who seems perpetually haunted by specters. Brock Faber looks like the nerd emoji given life. Connor Hellebuyck writes children’s books and PowerPoint presentations on goalie interference. Jake Oettinger is called Otter and gets talked about by fans as if he was one. Jaccob Slavin has a black daughter, and has been a great advocate for adoption. I’ve been on hockey Twitter enough to see how these guys are discussed and loved, especially by fans from marginalized communities. A moment like this will understandably hurt a lot of those fans. I’ve seen hundreds, if not thousands judging by engagement numbers, of people rethinking their fandom of players, teams, and even the league. I can’t blame them, but I think this was needed in a way, or at least might have a silver lining. These players might be supremely talented, they might be cute to you, they might be national heroes for bringing home the gold. They shouldn’t be looked at as your friends, your representatives, or aspirational in any way other than being great at their job. They might support a cause you support, or say or do something you agree with, and there’s nothing wrong with celebrating that when it happens, but I don’t think the parasocial relationship (not derogatory, just descriptive) should go any further than that. Charles Barkley said it best in his Nike ad from 1993. He’s not a role model. Quinn Hughes is not a role model. Auston Matthews certainly isn’t a role model.
This is disappointing, no doubt. It’s okay (and I would argue it’s the right feeling) to think this is bad on their part. If you’re American, not feeling patriotic about all this is a healthy response. If you’re not, I can only imagine it’s even worse. I certainly don’t like any of it. But I’m not disappointed in them, because I didn’t expect anything of them. If there’s any moral to this ramble, it’s to not let these guys have the power to disappoint you. Call it out, reinforce that it’s not okay, but at the end of the day, these men aren’t really special. They play hockey well. Let that be all they do for you.
As always, you can find me on Bluesky or in the Capitals’ Discord.
