The majority of the gold-medal-winning Team USA men’s hockey team has arrived in Washington, DC to meet President Donald Trump and attend his Tuesday night State of the Union address.
The team’s arrival was scheduled during a now-viral phone call between Trump and the players, during which the former seemed to downplay the U.S. women’s team’s matching gold-medal achievement. In the aftermath of that call, five of the players on the team chose not to make the trip to the nation’s capital: Brock Nelson, Jackson LaCombe, Jake Guentzel, Jake Oettinger, and Kyle Connor.
None of the five were captured in any of the photos the team took on their trip, boarding a government plane from Florida or at the White House.
Four of the five players, Nelson, LaCombe, Guentzel, and Oettinger, have extensive ties to the Minnesota area, either through birth or later being raised in the state. Three of them, Nelson, Guentzel, and Oettinger, are represented by the same agent, Ben Hankinson of Octagon Athlete Representation, who is also from Minnesota.
The Minnesota area has been a near-constant target of attacks by the Trump administration, as it is a well-known stronghold for the opposing Democratic Party. The President and some of his cabinet officials recently deployed a coordinated surge of federal immigration agents (ICE) into the state to support the administration’s mass deportation policies, leading to the deaths of two citizens.
Whether the Minnesota-connected players declined Trump’s invitations due to those events or anything related is not known. According to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, the three Hankinson clients wanted to attend with the rest of their teammates but couldn’t due to scheduling.
On Wednesday night, Nelson’s Colorado Avalanche play the Utah Mammoth, LaCombe’s Anaheim Ducks play the Edmonton Oilers, Guentzel’s Tampa Bay Lightning play the Toronto Maple Leafs, Oettinger’s Dallas Stars play the Seattle Kraken, and Connor’s Winnipeg Jets play the Vancouver Canucks.
However, several players involved in those same games inexplicably didn’t have the same scheduling issues and are in DC, including Utah’s Clayton Keller, Toronto’s Auston Matthews, and Winnipeg’s Connor Hellebuyck. Hellebuyck’s Jets teammate, Connor, was even on the ice at Winnipeg’s practice on Tuesday morning.
“I’m just getting ready,” Connor told The Athletic’s Murat Ates. “We play on Wednesday. It’s a big second half, so I just wanted to make sure I was ready.”
The attending players toured the White House and later met with Trump in the Oval Office.
While there, Matthew Tkachuk gave Trump his gold medal to wear for a photo. “I’m not giving it back,” Trump said.
According to PBS News, Trump’s remarks in the House of Representatives chamber at the U.S. Capitol are expected to last two to three hours. The administration plans to make room for the whole team to attend the speech, while dozens of Democratic lawmakers plan to boycott the address.
Ahead of Tuesday, the entire women’s team declined Trump’s invitation, citing “previously scheduled academic and professional commitments.”
