Streetwise Professor

Usually if I don’t get on a story in a day, the opportunity is lost. Not so with the US hockey gold medal. Mainly because Trump. Because isn’t it always?

One striking thing has been what bad sports and sore losers the Canadians have been. Nothing but excuses.

“Game was decided in 3-on-3. Not fair.” Same rules for everyone. And more open ice gives an advantage to the team with the most dynamic offensive players, which was Canada here in part because the US made.a deliberate choice not to match Canada on this dimension and left its best offensive players off the roster. So if anything, 3-on-3 was a huge advantage to Canada.

And might I add: Canada failed to score on a 5-on-3 situation. And won its quarterfinal game scoring a goal with six skaters on the ice.

“The US goalie played out of his mind. We were better on the ice.” Yes, yes, he did. But last time I checked goalies are part of a hockey team, and they are on the ice. And it is a well know adage in hockey that a hot goalie can lead a lesser team to victory in playoff situations. True in a series, even more true in a single game. So, getting beaten by the goalie, well

“We would have won in a series.” Who cares? It wasn’t a series, and your strategery should have taken that into account.

Now to the American journalists. Or should I say, at the risk of redundancy, the anti-American journalists who have melted down like ice in July.

Here’s a representative example:

The U.S. men's hockey team won gold — and then lost the room.

A column on fragile, fleeting unity and an historic team that let its moment drift into political manipulation:https://t.co/aBgsBSwjKm

— Jerry Brewer (@JerryBrewer) February 24, 2026

They didn’t lose the room Jerry, they lost your room, that being the bitter anti-American leftist loser room. Let’s call it the Bluesky room. Americans not of that persuasion were quite stoked by Trump calling the team to congratulate them, and having them in attendance at the State of the Union address last night.

What lost the leftist losers is that Trump called the team to congratulate them, and he told a joke. Which he is known to do They laughed uproariously. BUT IT WAS A MISOGYNIST JOKE THAT DISRESPECTED THE US WOMEN’S GOLD MEDAL TEAM!!! How dare they laugh at that!!!

All Trump said was if he didn’t invite the women’s team to the White House he’d get impeached. Given his history that’s a wry observation. And it was clearly directed at the leftist losers who are always trying to impeach him, not the women’s team.

By the way, Trump had already invited the women to the White House, but they deferred their visit due to scheduling issues.

I would add that expecting a group of guys riotously celebrating an epic victory to enforce the loser left’s speech codes is about the dumbest fucking thing imaginable.

As they say, if you can’t take a joke . . . Well, there’s a lot of . . . that needs to go around.

So this was one of those confected controversies that says a lot more about the loser left than Trump or US hockey players.

And I am so tired of sportswriters like old Jerry Brewer who apparently think that writing about, you know, sports is beneath them. They really aspire to be political and social commentators.

This is a consequence of journalist overproduction. Too many people aspiring to be political and social commentators for the jobs available, so they slum it in sports and inflict their deep insights on us until something better turns up.

I pine for the days when sportswriters were cigar chomping, heavy drinking guys who were obsessed with sports, knew their sports inside out, and didn’t have pretensions beyond that.

“Shut up and dribble” is a good rule for athletes. “Shut up and write about their dribbling. Period” would be a good rule for sportswriters.

Then there’s this piece of work, who attempted to denigrate the importance of the hockey win by claiming that ackshually the WNBA is a lot more popular than hockey.

epic meltdown by The Atlantic staff writer over USA Men’s Hockey pic.twitter.com/4wiZghrrSx

— Jerry Dunleavy IV ?? (@JerryDunleavy) February 24, 2026

WNBA TV audiences are bigger! So there!

Er, sample selection bias. The 960,000 number is for nationally televised WNBA games. The 440,000 number is for all NHL broadcasts, which includes every regular season game in every city, i.e., 80 times 32 local broadcasts. The total number of viewers of hockey therefore dwarfs the WNBA. For the finals series in the two sports, the WNBA averaged about 1.5 million; NHL about 2.5 million in the US and 4.4 million in Canada.

But the real clincher is revenue. The WNBA does not release revenue figures. (Gee, I wonder why?). Estimates are in the $300 million ballpark. NHL? 20 times as much–$6 billion.

So there’s no comparison between the WNBA and the NHL financially, but especially not on the court or ice. Hockey exhibits amazing athleticism and the current game is at its zenith. I tried to watch the WNBA. I really did. It was painful. Virtually no athleticism. Virtually no skills. God save us if women’s basketball is at its zenith.

But this woman writes for the Atlantic. Anyone who reads about sports in the Atlantic, HuffPost, the NYT, the WaPo etc. doesn’t really GAFF about sports, and knows less. But these outlets inflict their deep thoughts on us especially when they can do it to attack Trump and patriotic Americans.

So my parthian shot to them, and to the Canadians:

You lost. Now go put some ice on it.