{"id":487421,"date":"2026-02-24T10:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T10:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/487421\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T10:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T10:06:09","slug":"u-s-mens-hockey-star-zach-werenski-makes-state-of-the-union-decision-after-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/487421\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. men’s hockey star Zach Werenski makes State of the Union decision after Olympics"},"content":{"rendered":"

U.S. men’s hockey star Zach Werenski makes State of the Union decision after Olympics<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Zach Werenski dished out the assist that won Team USA the gold medal.<\/p>\n

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And for that, he and his teammates are receiving quite the honor upon their return from the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy.<\/p>\n

They were invited to attend President Donald Trump’s State of the Union Address, which is Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

According to The Athletic’s Aaron Portzline<\/a>, “(Werenski)\u00a0and his USA teammates are expected to attend President Trump\u2019s State of the Union address.”<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Jack Hughes, not a miracle, just magic<\/a><\/p>\n

That’s the opposite decision of the U.S. women’s hockey team, which announced Monday that it would not be attending<\/a> the State of the Union.<\/p>\n

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Werenski and his teammates flew into Miami on Monday as they returned to the U.S. from Italy.<\/p>\n

They spoke with President Trump on the phone after their win on Sunday, and now they’ll get recognition in the nation’s capital on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Werenski certainly earned his plaudits. It was his hustle after a puck in overtime that won a 50-50 battle with Canada’s Nathan MacKinnon, and then he picked his head up in time to dish a smooth pass to Jack Hughes, who slotted in the sudden-death, game-winning goal for gold.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Team USA honors Johnny Gaudreau in special way after gold medal<\/a><\/p>\n

Schedule-wise, this will be easier for some players than others.<\/p>\n

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The NHL resumes play from the Olympic break on Wednesday. There are eight games that night, meaning 16 teams’ worth of players.<\/p>\n

Werenski, though, won’t have a game on his schedule until Thursday. His Columbus Blue Jackets return to action that night against the Boston Bruins.<\/p>\n

With the State of the Union on Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET, anyone planning to play on Wednesday for their NHL team won’t be around long before taking the ice.<\/p>\n

More NHL news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. men’s hockey star Zach Werenski makes State of the Union decision after Olympics originally appeared on The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[113110,223944,1785,392,12,152840,32700,39780,385,99,223710,223065],"class_list":["post-487421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-2026-winter-olympics","tag-aaron-portzline","tag-boston-bruins","tag-columbus-blue-jackets","tag-donald-trump","tag-jack-hughes","tag-johnny-gaudreau","tag-nathan-mackinnon","tag-nhl","tag-sports","tag-state-of-the-union-address","tag-zach-werenski"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}