Team USA’s gold medal hockey wins have become political. Let’s break down the drama.

Two teams. Two stunning overtime wins. Two gold medal victories. That’s the story of Team USA hockey at the 2026 Winter Olympics. The men’s and women’s squads followed remarkably similar paths to gold, which both teams secured with stunning sudden-death game winners against their Canadian archrivals.

But from the moment the final horn sounded, the political divides that define modern America began to create cracks in the unity that inspired their victories, and the men and women have diverged in how they have responded.

The women won their gold medal first, when Michigan native Megan Keller scored four minutes into overtime to seal the win over Canada on Thursday. The celebration following that win was notably nonpolitical. But the conversation changed three days later after the men’s victory, which was capped by an overtime goal from Jack Hughes that secured the team their first gold medal since the legendary “Miracle on Ice” in 1980.

Footage from the celebration in the men’s locker room featured an unexpected figure in the center of the action: FBI Director Kash Patel. In a video from the postgame party, Patel can be seen chugging beer, joining the team in a sing-along to a country song and wearing a team member’s gold medal.

Patel has faced criticism for partying with the men’s hockey team in Europe at a time when the FBI is involved in several major cases — including violence in Mexico following the death of a major drug cartel leader and the ongoing search for Nancy Guthrie.

Another video shows Patel holding his phone while Trump addresses the team over speakerphone and invites them to come to his State of the Union address on Tuesday.

“We’re giving the State of the Union speech on Tuesday night. I could send a military plane or something. … We’ll get Kash and we’ll get the military to get you guys over,” he said.

He also invited them to the White House the next day. “We’ll just have some fun,” he said, adding that “we’re going to have to bring the women’s team, you do know that,” and suggesting that he “probably would be impeached” if he didn’t include them.

Presidential invitations to visit the White House are common for championship-winning teams or athletes. Those events, though not without their own controversies, are typically nonpartisan celebrations of the team’s success. Members of the 2018 U.S. women’s hockey team were part of a contingent of Olympic winners that traveled to the White House after their gold medal win at the PyeongChang Games.

The State of the Union is very different. Often the most-watched speech given by a president in a given year, the event is inherently political and inevitably steeped in partisan tensions.

The women’s team formally declined Trump’s offer on Monday, saying that it was not logistically possible for the players to attend.

“We are sincerely grateful for the invitation extended to our gold medal-winning U.S. Women’s Hockey Team and deeply appreciate the recognition of their extraordinary achievement,” a USA Hockey spokesperson wrote in a statement to NBC News. “Due to the timing and previously scheduled academic and professional commitments following the Games, the athletes are unable to participate.”

Individual players on the women’s hockey team haven’t commented on the invitation.

Then on Tuesday morning, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that he expected the men’s team to be there.

“We’re going to work out logistics, and somehow, some way, we’ll squeeze in the hockey players tonight, and it’ll be a great moment for America,” Johnson said.

Twenty of the team’s 25 members are scheduled to attend, according to The Athletic. They visited Trump in the Oval Office for a brief conversation on Tuesday afternoon.

Quinn Hughes, who plays for the men’s team with his brother Jack, said he was eager to attend. “We’re excited to go,” he told Good Morning America on Tuesday morning. “It’s going to be special for us.”

During that conversation, both Hughes brothers made a point to highlight the closeness between the men’s and women’s teams, who they said spent significant time together during the lead-up to the Olympics and the Games themselves.

Like a number of other U.S. Olympians over the past two weeks, Jack Hughes has lamented the fact that athletes are inevitably forced into the political fray when all they want to do is represent their country.

“Everything is so political. We’re athletes,” he told the Daily Mail during a victory party at a Miami nightclub on Monday night. “People are so negative out there and they are just trying to find a reason to put people down and make something out of almost nothing.”

That sentiment was shared by Jack and Quinn’s mother, Ellen Hughes, who was a member of the U.S. national team in the 1990s.

“These players, both the men and women, can bring so much unity to a group and to a country. … People that cheered on that don’t watch hockey, people that have politics on one side or on the other side, and that’s all both the men’s team and the women’s team care about,” she told Today on Tuesday.