After The Gold Rush – On Sunday morning – the 46th anniversary of the “Miracle On Ice” game in Lake Placid, NY in the 1980 Winter Olympics – Team USA goes for its first gold medal in men’s hockey in nearly half a century. The USA men’s team hasn’t 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.
Team USA has already insured its 12th medal in men’s hockey in 26 competitions beginning in 1920. It has won gold twice – in 1960 and 1980 – and it leads all countries with eight silver medals in men’s hockey.
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 – quite literally – and then some.
“We’ll probably alter the time based on when it finishes up,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “So, we may have to push it back a little bit.”
“I think we’re pushing practice or something back, meetings,” says Caps center P-L Dubois. “I think we would have had a lot of guys calling in sick with a 10:30 practice.”
The official practice time for Sunday remains 10:30 a.m. But don’t be surprised if a few stragglers – or a team full of them – arrives on ice a shade late.
Team Canada’s 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.
“You’re pulling for LT and Tom to bring home gold,” says Caps goaltender Charlie Lindgren. “I’m also American, so I guess I’m hoping for a really good game.”
Caps defenseman Martin Fehervary wore an alternate captain’s “A” 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.
But the performance of the Slovaks has been among the best stories of the tournament to this point.
“Slovakia and what they’ve done – and Marty plays such a big role on that team and he has for so many years on their national team – what an impressive run they went on,” says Carbery. ‘[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.
“If you were evaluating their performance and every country and giving them let’s say a letter grade, I think Slovakia would be at the top of anybody’s list, of they overachieved what expectations were. And Marty is such a big part of that; credit to him.”
With the bronze medal settled, all eyes now turn to Sunday’s headline gold medal game, the final event of the 2026 Winter Games.
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.
“I’ve got Canada for sure, 100 percent,” says Ontario-born Connor McMichael.
“I’m rooting for them,” says Massachusetts-born Ryan Leonard of his Canadian teammates. “I’m rooting for Tom to play good and for the US to come out on top. I can’t say Canada.”
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.
“You can’t dream of a better matchup than this, Canada vs. US,” says Lindgren. “Obviously we’ve got a lot of Canadians on this team, a lot of Americans on this team, so you’ve got that banter going back and forth. And then just probably watching the fastest hockey game of all time [Sunday]. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
Welcome To The Working Week – Saturday’s 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’s the first of Washington’s 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.
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’ll 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.
“The first two days I really liked,” says Carbery. “Today was the first day that I noticed and felt a little bit like, enough. You can feel the guys want to play games.”
Carbery briefly addressed the team at the end of Saturday’s session.
“To go through a second training camp, guys want to play games,” he reiterates. “And they practice and they’re professional and they put the work in. But you’ve got to do it, and we’ve got to make sure. We’ve 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.
“We’ve got one more day [Sunday] that we’re going to stay dialed in on. We’ll take another off day [Monday] and then we’ll go [Tuesday], that day before to really sharpen up, the day before Philly.”
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’s Jan. 29 game at Detroit, and neither has played since.
McMichael wore a light blue non-contact sweater on Wednesday but has been adorned in a full contact model since.
“I didn’t have to come into the facility or anything,” says McMichael of the early days of his break. “I was just doing some at-home exercises that weren’t too fun. But it wasn’t too bad.”
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.
“I think we still have enough days before we start,” says Carbery of his concern over Carlson’s absence. “I’m not overly concerned at this point.”
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 – some for travel reasons and others for rest purposes – in December and January, likely as many practices as they’ll end up conducting in the week leading up to Wednesday’s game.
“And I would be surprised – to that point – if we get five practices the rest of the season,” says Carbery. “That’s 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 – or whatever [midseason] break – you usually get one practice and go, or two practices and then go.
“Here, with having five – and arguably, you could have six if you wanted and felt like you needed it – 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 – 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.
“So, 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.”
