During the first weeks of 2026, Jake Sanderson and Brady Tkachuk really wanted to focus on the task at hand with their NHL team. They didn't want to get too distracted by the Olympics and everything that comes with it.
Sometimes, it was impossible to escape.
The Senators spend a lot of time traveling to major American cities. In the last month, they have visited Salt Lake City, Denver, New York, Detroit, Columbus, Nashville, Pittsburgh, Raleigh, and Philadelphia. In all of these cities, they encountered proud and excited hockey fans who wanted to talk about the upcoming international tournament.
“It's not just the fans,” Tkachuk said. “In Carolina, as I was leaving the arena, I ran into at least six people who wished me luck at the Games. The group included arena employees, but also a security guard and a police officer. It was nuts.”
The captain sees the same people every time he walks through the arena when the Senators visit Raleigh. They don't often stop him to chat.
“It’s the amount of people that you normally wouldn’t expect to care. I'm not going to lie to you. It’s getting pretty exciting.”
The wait has been long enough. Team USA will begin its tournament on Thursday at 3:10 p.m. EST, facing off against Latvia at the Milano Santagiulia IHO Arena. They will then take on Denmark — with Lars Eller — and Germany — with Tim Stützle — before the conclusion of the preliminary round.
The conversation with Tkachuk took place in the lobby of the hotel where the Senators were staying in Philadelphia, on the eve of the team's last game before the Olympic break.
Jake Sanderson was sitting next to his teammate. As a future member of the U.S. Olympic team, he too had stories to tell.
“Just yesterday, as I was leaving our hotel, I ran into a group of kids who wanted autographs. They told me they were fans of the U.S. national team. They promised me they would watch all of our games,” Sanderson said. "I feel the same way Brady does. We're about to experience something that is much bigger than us."
Tkachuk and Sanderson were excited, just hours away from the big departure. Since the Senators had been successful in recent weeks, winning four of their previous five games, they could start thinking about the great experience that lay ahead.
Without really knowing what the atmosphere would be like in Italy, the two players could imagine themselves playing in front of hostile crowds.
“I feel like we’re going to be the enemies, personally. People won't want to see us do well. I'm ready for that,” said the player who is used to dealing with boos from the crowd in at least 31 NHL arenas. "I'm ready for that. I know that lots of people will be supporting us from afar. We won’t be the fan favorites every game but we do strive in those types of environments.”
Once again, Sanderson agrees. “I remember a game at the World Championship. We were playing against Poland. The tournament wasn't even being held in Poland. It was in the Czech Republic. The fans wanted to see us lose,” he says. “That's how it often is. People want to see the big dogs go down early. It doesn't bother me. It's the kind of thing that fires me up.”
Sanderson and Tkachuk will feel the full support of their millions of fans, back home, knowing full well that those fans have high expectations. The Americans won their last gold medal in men's ice hockey when they achieved the famous “Miracle on Ice” in Lake Placid in 1980. It was their second victory in the Olympic final. The previous one had taken place 20 years earlier, in 1960, in Squaw Valley.
Between 1998 and 2014, during the five editions of the Games marked by the presence of NHL players, the United States won silver twice. Each time, they were defeated by the Canadian national team in the grand final.
