NEW YORK — Amidst a star-studded lineup that included Academy Award winner Nicole Kidman, “Bridgerton” actor Luke Thompson and celebrity chef Mario Carbone cooking meatballs and sending a studio audience of 227 people home with jars of tomato sauce, three gold medal-winning hockey players drew lots of laughs and many “awws” on another late-night appearance Monday.
Two nights after taking part in the monologue on “Saturday Night Live” at 30 Rock’s famous Studio 8H, Jack and Quinn Hughes and Hilary Knight were two floors down in Studio 6B to appear on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” The three athletes, fresh off being part of U.S. teams winning men’s and women’s gold medals, dropped perfectly timed one-liners and touched the crowd with some personal anecdotes.
When Fallon asked Knight, a five-time Olympian who forced overtime with the tying goal late in regulation in the gold-medal game, what was more nerve-wracking between playing Olympic hockey or appearing on “SNL,” Knight immediately responded, “Uh, SNL,” drawing a huge laugh.
Jack Hughes, Hilary Knight and Quinn Hughes won gold with the U.S. men’s and women’s teams in Milan. (Photo courtesy of Todd Owyoung / NBC)
Jack Hughes, a New Jersey Devils forward, had the audience howling when he described the dorm room setup at the Olympics, where he roomed with his older brother, Quinn, a Minnesota Wild defenseman.
“We walked in and the beds were like this far apart from each other,” Jack said, holding his hands a couple feet apart. “And then the first thing we did, we were like, ‘We’ve got to move these beds.’ So we started shifting things around. I didn’t want to roll over and be like this far from Quinn.”
Quinn said, “There’s a couple nights where I’m rolling around and he’s like, ‘Dude, you’ve got to stop rolling around.’”
But, he added, they loved it: “I felt like I was a freshman at Michigan again.”
After the Hugheses talked about the “mayhem” of the room and how messy Quinn’s side became by the end of the Olympics, Fallon turned his attention to Jack’s missing front teeth. He lost them toward the end of regulation in the gold-medal game, then scored the gold medal-clinching goal in overtime.
Fallon, a hockey fan who attends many New York Rangers games and has had Henrik Lundqvist on his show three times since 2022, said, “That is the most hockey thing I could ever think of happening in the world.”
Jack said Quinn came up to him during the final TV timeout and told him, “It’s not that bad.”
Fallon said he noticed that Jack hasn’t gotten his teeth repaired yet and maybe he shouldn’t: “I feel like this might be your thing.”
“I can promise you this won’t be my thing,” Jack said.
In the audience was Knight’s fiancée, Olympic speedskater Brittany Beau, to whom Knight proposed the morning before the gold-medal game. Fallon showed a picture of Knight proposing and pointed out how gutsy it was for her to pull out the ring over a storm grate.
“I like high-pressure situations, I guess,” she said. “I didn’t think about the grate before hovering over it.”
Quinn talked about how cool it was for him and his brother to watch Knight and her teammates win gold, pointing out that their mother, Ellen, has worked with the team since 2023. When Fallon asked where he watched the game, Quinn said it was in a suite at the arena with his brother and fellow Michigan alum Tom Brady. It was the first time they had met him.
“I mean, it was crazy. I don’t know how we got up there,” Quinn said.
“He was the most pumped out of all of us,” Jack said.
“It was a nail-biter, but I think they were the better team and I was happy for them, and no one was happier than Tom,” Quinn said. “He was jumping up and down.”
Fallon pointed out that Knight told her mom at age 5 that she would be an Olympian, even though women’s hockey wasn’t an event at the time: “I’m just dialed in like that,” she quipped.
And Fallon read a letter that Jack wrote to himself before he was drafted in 2019, which read in part, “Your brothers made you who you are on and off the ice. I hope that they’ll be able to say you did the same for them, that they had great NHL careers too. Maybe you even suited up with them a couple of times. Maybe we all represented the United States in the Olympics. Maybe we won a gold medal or gold medals together. What an honor that would be.”
Speaking of that, New Jersey Devils defenseman Luke Hughes — the youngest of the three NHL-playing brothers — was in the audience next to his mom and dad, Jim.
“He’s 6-2, so he looks older,” Quinn said.
When Fallon asked Luke if he plans to join Quinn and Jack on the 2030 U.S. Olympic team, he said, “Hope so.”
Knight reiterated that this was indeed her final Olympics even though she joked that the French Alps in 2030 are appealing.
“This is definitely my last,” she said. “I mean, storybook ending, amazing team to go out with, just an incredible win, double golds.”
“You crushed it,” Fallon said.
“Couldn’t have written it better,” Knight agreed.
After the segment ended, Fallon admired Knight’s gold medal during the commercial break as some audience members yelled, “Go USA.”
Jimmy Fallon holds Hilary Knight’s gold medal on Monday. (Photo courtesy of Todd Owyoung / NBC)
Knight and the Hughes brothers clearly had a blast throughout the process, including meeting Kidman before the show. She boasted during her interview that she got to hold the gold medal and was “so thrilled for them.”
The original interview was 11 minutes long. It was trimmed for TV, but the extended version will go up online after the show airs.
“I know it’s obviously a great show, and we’re going to be ourselves on it and just have fun with it,” Jack told The Athletic an hour before the taping. “It’s a pretty cool experience. I know a lot of our family members watch that show, and we’re happy to be a part of it.”