After The Gold Rush \u2013 On Sunday morning \u2013 the 46th anniversary of the \u201cMiracle On Ice\u201d game in Lake Placid, NY in the 1980 Winter Olympics \u2013 Team USA goes for its first gold medal in men\u2019s hockey in nearly half a century. The USA men\u2019s team hasn\u2019t won gold since 1980, when it defeated Finland for the gold medal, days after vanquishing Russia in a fabled miracle upset on Feb. 22, 1980.<\/p>\n
Team USA has already insured its 12th medal in men\u2019s hockey in 26 competitions beginning in 1920. It has won gold twice \u2013 in 1960 and 1980 \u2013 and it leads all countries with eight silver medals in men\u2019s hockey.<\/p>\n
Sunday in Milan, Italy, Team USA takes on Canada in the gold medal game in the culmination of the 2026 Winter Olympic Games, a highly anticipated contest that may prove challenging for the Caps and staff to watch. The game begins at 8 a.m. Sunday, and the Caps are slated to take the ice for a practice session at 10:30 a.m.; they also have workouts and meetings scheduled ahead of the Sunday morning practice, which may make it difficult to devote full attention to a game that figures to draw the eyeballs of the hockey world \u2013 quite literally \u2013 and then some.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll probably alter the time based on when it finishes up,\u201d says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. \u201cSo, we may have to push it back a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re pushing practice or something back, meetings,\u201d says Caps center P-L Dubois. \u201cI think we would have had a lot of guys calling in sick with a 10:30 practice.\u201d<\/p>\n
The official practice time for Sunday remains 10:30 a.m. But don\u2019t be surprised if a few stragglers \u2013 or a team full of them \u2013 arrives on ice a shade late.<\/p>\n
Team Canada\u2019s roster features Caps goaltender Logan Thompson and right wing Tom Wilson, and the Caps are unified in their intent to watch what promises to be a heavy and heated match between two rival heavyweight hockey nations.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re pulling for LT and Tom to bring home gold,\u201d says Caps goaltender Charlie Lindgren. \u201cI\u2019m also American, so I guess I\u2019m hoping for a really good game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Caps defenseman Martin Fehervary wore an alternate captain\u2019s \u201cA\u201d for Team Slovakia on Friday in its semifinal loss to the Americans. Saturday, Fehervary and the Slovaks fell just shy of medaling, losing the bronze medal game to Finland.<\/p>\n
But the performance of the Slovaks has been among the best stories of the tournament to this point.<\/p>\n
\u201cSlovakia and what they\u2019ve done \u2013 and Marty plays such a big role on that team and he has for so many years on their national team \u2013 what an impressive run they went on,\u201d says Carbery. \u2018[They] come up a little bit short in the game [Friday vs. Team USA] but if anybody had Slovakia winning in the same pool as Finland and Sweden, right? They win the pool, win another game, they end up in the semifinals.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you were evaluating their performance and every country and giving them let\u2019s say a letter grade, I think Slovakia would be at the top of anybody\u2019s list, of they overachieved what expectations were. And Marty is such a big part of that; credit to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the bronze medal settled, all eyes now turn to Sunday\u2019s headline gold medal game, the final event of the 2026 Winter Games.<\/p>\n
Including goaltender Garin Bjorklund, there are 11 Canadians currently on the Caps roster and in the dressing room at MedStar Capitals Iceplex. And including practice goaltender Parker Milner, there are 11 Americans in the room as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got Canada for sure, 100 percent,\u201d says Ontario-born Connor McMichael.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m rooting for them,\u201d says Massachusetts-born Ryan Leonard of his Canadian teammates. \u201cI\u2019m rooting for Tom to play good and for the US to come out on top. I can\u2019t say Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n
The boozy brunch will have to wait until after the medals have been draped across the chests later Sunday morning, while the Caps are going through their practice paces.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t dream of a better matchup than this, Canada vs. US,\u201d says Lindgren. \u201cObviously we\u2019ve got a lot of Canadians on this team, a lot of Americans on this team, so you\u2019ve got that banter going back and forth. And then just probably watching the fastest hockey game of all time [Sunday]. It\u2019s going to be a lot of fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Welcome To The Working Week \u2013 Saturday\u2019s practice was the third of five slated in what essentially serves as a mid-season mini-camp as the Caps ramp things up for their return to the ice Wednesday night against Philadelphia at Capital One Arena. That\u2019s the first of Washington\u2019s 23 remaining regular season games as it tries to claw its way into the Eastern Conference playoff picture with just over a quarter of the season remaining.<\/p>\n
After returning to the ice with a pair of spirited midweek sessions on Wednesday and Thursday, the Caps took Friday off. They reconvened Saturday morning, and they\u2019ll practice again Sunday before resting Monday. Tuesday will be one last tuneup before facing the Flyers in the first game in 20 nights for both teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first two days I really liked,\u201d says Carbery. \u201cToday was the first day that I noticed and felt a little bit like, enough. You can feel the guys want to play games.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carbery briefly addressed the team at the end of Saturday\u2019s session.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo go through a second training camp, guys want to play games,\u201d he reiterates. \u201cAnd they practice and they\u2019re professional and they put the work in. But you\u2019ve got to do it, and we\u2019ve got to make sure. We\u2019ve had a significant amount of time off. So just a reminder that these days will pay off and the work that you put in and the preparation that you put in right now is going to help you for these last 23 [games]. And so, stay on top of it. I know it gets monotonous; it becomes a grind.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got one more day [Sunday] that we\u2019re going to stay dialed in on. We\u2019ll take another off day [Monday] and then we\u2019ll go [Tuesday], that day before to really sharpen up, the day before Philly.\u201d<\/p>\n
For players like Lindgren and McMichael, the break helped limit the number of games they missed. Washington got Thompson and Dubois back in its final game before the Olympic break, but both Lindgren (lower body) and McMichael (upper body) were injured in the team\u2019s Jan. 29 game at Detroit, and neither has played since.<\/p>\n
McMichael wore a light blue non-contact sweater on Wednesday but has been adorned in a full contact model since.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t have to come into the facility or anything,\u201d says McMichael of the early days of his break. \u201cI was just doing some at-home exercises that weren\u2019t too fun. But it wasn\u2019t too bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Caps also lost defenseman John Carlson to a lower body injury in the first period of their Feb. 5 game with Nashville, their last game prior to the break.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we still have enough days before we start,\u201d says Carbery of his concern over Carlson\u2019s absence. \u201cI\u2019m not overly concerned at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n
In this season of the highly compressed schedule, the Caps have had precious little practice time. One reason for that is they found the need to cancel a handful of practices \u2013 some for travel reasons and others for rest purposes \u2013 in December and January, likely as many practices as they\u2019ll end up conducting in the week leading up to Wednesday\u2019s game.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I would be surprised \u2013 to that point \u2013 if we get five practices the rest of the season,\u201d says Carbery. \u201cThat\u2019s just how condensed the schedule is, and how often you’re playing games, and how often you need to give maintenance days, and guys are a little bit banged up. And that’s the uniqueness, right? The All-Star break \u2013 or whatever [midseason] break \u2013 you usually get one practice and go, or two practices and then go.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere, with having five \u2013 and arguably, you could have six if you wanted and felt like you needed it \u2013 yeah, it’s unique. But we’re trying to utilize the best possible way that we can of getting our brains back, getting our hands back, and getting our legs. Those are the three things that I equate. Brains \u2013 our ability to read the game, make sure we’re sharp with everything we need to do mentally. Hands, so that’s all our execution, play with the puck, passes, shooting, making plays in tight areas, breakouts, regroup, passes, everything being really, really sharp. And then our legs is our conditioning and pace of play.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, that’s what we’ve got to just ramp up to make sure the next Wednesday it’s right at the top, and we took the necessary steps and put the necessary preparation in to make sure that we were ready to hit the ground running.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After The Gold Rush \u2013 On Sunday morning \u2013 the 46th anniversary of the \u201cMiracle On Ice\u201d game…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-496092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}