For Team USA, let this one sink in before moving on to the Olympics

Every now and then, you can read a quote from an athlete, and it can be 100% true but still be wrong.

After Team USA lost the 4 Nations Face-Off final to Canada, 3-2, in overtime Thursday, forward Dylan Larkin was asked about America’s chances to grab gold in 2026 during the Milan Olympics.

“There is something to look forward to with this group, which is great,” Larkin said via the “The Athletic’s” Michael Russo. “That’s the big one. And I know that it’s a little bit of a different tournament, different rules, but we really feel like we can play any kind of game on any kind of surface and anywhere against anyone.”

Sorry, Dylan. A lot of what you said there is right. But you can’t do that. The next one can’t always be “the big one.”

We’ve been singing that song since the World Cup in 1996.

If Larkin, Auston Matthews or Jake Guentzel had scored that game-winner for the Red, White and Blue instead of Connor McDavid for Canada, no one would’ve said anything to the effect of the Olympics as “the big one.”

Nothing would’ve mattered except “this one.”

All things being equal, Larkin makes a fair point. The Olympics are a bigger deal. It’s a larger tournament on a grander stage with more teams and more good players involved.

It’s just that there was a ton of hype during the run-up to Thursday’s game in Boston. A lot of folks were making it out to be potentially the biggest hockey moment on U.S. soil since Lake Placid in 1980. Even though the analogy made zero sense, the network television pregame-opening montage digitally edited the Kurt Russell “Miracle” speech into the current team’s locker room.

Then we turn around and treat the game like an appetizer because the other team won?

Nah. That doesn’t fly.

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No one was treating the 4 Nations as a warm-up act on Sunday morning when everyone was sharing videos of three fights in nine seconds on social media and acting like the sport was reinvented. No one was positioning this competition as Chapter 1 of a longer story.

It’s a tournament. We didn’t win it. Canada did.

After the Americans won 3-1 over Canada in the preliminary round, we were casting the Tkachuk brothers as greater American patriots than Nathan Hale and Paul Revere, and that victory was our nation’s biggest win since Iwo Jima.

Now that we lost on home ice, it’s tough to sell, “Eh, we’ll get over it. Good game. Go get ‘em next time in the real tournament, n’at.”

Sorry. I’m not buying that.

If it’s a big deal when we win, then it’s got to hurt a little when we lose. And, frankly, when it comes to Team USA hockey, maybe that’s why — despite success at the junior level — the country has come up short as often as we have at the “best-on-best” international competitions since ‘96.

It can’t just be above the fold with banner headlines when we win and Page 3 news when we lose. The Tkachuk brothers can’t be in line for cabinet appointments because they started a few fights and won a game in the prelims, and then we simply turn to NFL Draft talk after we blew a lead in the final.

THERE IT IS! THE GAME WINNER! THE TOURNAMENT WINNER! ????????????

CONNOR MCDAVID HAS WON IT FOR CANADA!!! #4Nations pic.twitter.com/nDneA2e26K

— NHL (@NHL) February 21, 2025

Canada doesn’t treat it that way. It’s an A-1 story if they win, and a party in the streets. It’s an A-1 story if they lose, and panic over how they fix it next time so it never happens again.”

For American hockey fans, it’s more like, “That was fun. When does the NHL start up again?”

To a certain extent, that’s the way it has to be given the calendar. But in Philadelphia, it mattered just as much when they lost the Super Bowl two years ago as it did when they won it this year. In Pittsburgh, it hurt just as much when David Volek eliminated the Penguins in 1993 as it did when the Pens won Stanley Cups the previous two years.

Just down the road from TD Garden in Foxborough, they’ve won six Super Bowls since 2001. Yet their fans still bristle when you bring up Eli Manning, David Tyree or the “Philly Special.”

Again, Larkin isn’t wrong. It’s just that maybe letting this one sting a little bit before looking ahead to the Olympics may actually help the cause.