Right after a historic win in Italy, the U.S. men’s hockey team is stuck overseas. Yes, it’s Tuesday, February 24, and they’re still there.

The gold medal was still warm when the weather turned. The U.S. men’s national hockey team beat Canada in Milan-Cortina and did what you’re supposed to do after that kind of win — they hugged, they shouted, they draped themselves in flags and tried to process a moment they’ll be replaying in their heads at 3 a.m. for the rest of their lives. It was tight, it was mean, it was exactly what U.S.-Canada Olympic hockey is supposed to be.

The Travel Delays Happened After Viral Video of U.S. Men’s Team

And then the storm rolled in. Instead of flying home with hardware in their carry-ons, the Americans found themselves staring at departure boards that weren’t departing anywhere. A winter system barreled through northern Italy, grounded flights, and left players, staffers, and a small traveling circus of family members stuck in place. Gold medalists, meet gate change C27.

It’s almost funny. You spend years training for the one thing you can control — your legs, your lungs, your shifts — and then you get iced out by the sky.

The timing couldn’t have been stranger. While the team was juggling hotel extensions and rebooking flights, a video started making the rounds back home. A postgame phone call with President Donald Trump lit up timelines for reasons that had nothing to do with breakouts or backchecking.

On the call, the President congratulated the men and joked about inviting them to the White House. Then the subject of the women’s team came up. “We’re going to have to bring the women’s team,” he said at one point, according to a news report. “I’d probably be impeached” if we didn’t.

There was laughter on the line. The kind that travels fast on social media.

Here’s the part that hung in the air: the U.S. women had just done the same thing. In the same tournament. Against the same rival. Under captain Hilary Knight, they beat Canada 2–1 in overtime. Clean. Clinical. Cold-blooded. Another gold for a program that has made winning feel routine, even when it’s anything but.

So hearing their invite framed as a political obligation — a punchline, even in jest — didn’t land well. Not in a sport where the women have carried the flag with just as much grit and, historically, a little less spotlight.

You could argue it was harmless locker-room banter. You could also argue that words matter, especially when they echo beyond the room. Both things can be true. What’s not debatable is that the women earned their place at any table, Oval Office or otherwise.

Men’s Team Can’t Return From Europe, Yet

Back in Italy, the men were still stuck. Most of the roster has NHL contracts waiting on the other side of the Atlantic. The league doesn’t stop breathing just because the Olympics do. Coaches are already diagramming line combinations for the stretch run. General managers are counting bodies. Equipment managers are probably counting sticks.

The longer the team sits, the more complicated that gets. Social media, at least, has been a decent coping mechanism. A few players posted photos of snow swallowing up runways. One joked about lacing up for shinny in the airport parking lot. If you can’t get home, you might as well find a sheet of ice somewhere. Hockey players are like that. Give them frozen water and they’ll figure out the rest.

There’s something human about seeing Olympic champions killing time like the rest of us — scrolling, pacing, waiting for the next update from a gate agent who doesn’t have one. The medal doesn’t get you to the front of the weather line.

It also throws a small spotlight on the larger machine. The Winter Olympics are romantic on television — alpine backdrops, flags snapping in the wind, slow-motion replays under perfect lighting. On the ground, they’re a massive logistical gamble staged in places where winter isn’t a theme. It’s a force.

Milan-Cortina pulled it off in spectacular fashion inside the arenas. Outside, nature had the last word.

And this is where you step back a little.

The men’s team will get home. The NHL will adjust. The White House invitations will sort themselves out one way or another. In a month, the delay will be a story told on a podcast, maybe over a beer in some rink-side lounge.

But right now, it’s a reminder that resilience doesn’t clock out when the final horn sounds.

We love to talk about toughness in sports. We measure it in blocked shots and overtime shifts. We slow it down and add dramatic music. What we don’t usually see is the quieter version — the patience it takes to sit in uncertainty, to keep perspective when your schedule blows up, to answer the same question about a viral video for the tenth time without rolling your eyes.

That’s part of it, too. There’s also an uncomfortable symmetry here. The men win gold. The women win gold. One viral clip shifts the conversation from celebration to controversy in a matter of hours. It’s 2026 and we’re still calibrating how we talk about women’s sports in real time.

The women didn’t need validation from the men’s call. Their overtime winner was validation enough. Still, moments like that reveal the fault lines. You don’t have to scream about it to see them.

Meanwhile, somewhere in an Italian airport lounge, a handful of American players are probably staring out at falling snow, medals tucked safely in backpacks, wondering when they can finally sleep in their own beds.

It’s a strange comedown from the highest peak in your sport.

When they do land back in the States, it won’t be cinematic. No orchestras. No dramatic lighting. Just customs lines and connecting flights and a rush to get back to work. The NHL season doesn’t care about your jet lag. Neither does February.

But the story will travel with them. The gold medal game. The overtime tension on the women’s side. The phone call that sparked debate. The storm that wouldn’t clear. All of it stitched into one messy, very human chapter.

Sports are neat inside the boards. Scoreboard. Final horn. Handshake line. Everything else is weather. And right now, weather is winning.