Jack Hughes defends Crew USA males’s assist for ladies’s hockey staff

Crew USA Olympic hockey hero Jack Hughes spoke about his assist for his nation’s girls’s hockey staff after his staff was the topic of backlash for laughing at a joke by President Donald Trump in regards to the girls’s staff. 

Throughout an interview on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Present” Friday, Hughes opened up about his respect for the ladies’s staff after McAfee appeared to reference the controversy by joking that Hughes and his teammates “hate” the ladies gamers. 

“We’re hanging out with them a lot, the ladies’s staff. We had been supporting them. Like, we had been at their video games, they had been at our video games,” Hughes mentioned. 

Hughes then appeared to handle the current criticism of his staff for its response to Trump’s joke.

“Like all these folks speaking, what number of of them watched their gold medal recreation? Me and Quinn Hughes had been on the recreation. We had been on the recreation till like additional time ended on the glass, and we had been leaping up and down so excited for these ladies, so excited they gained,” Hughes mentioned. 

“And what number of of those folks watched the gold medal recreation, watched their semifinals recreation? Like 10 of the ten of our gamers went to their recreation within the round-robin. Like, we supported them a lot, and we’re so pleased with them. We’re so comfortable that they gained, they usually introduced a gold medal again and that, you recognize, I mentioned it, the boys’s and ladies’s staff each introduced gold medals again. So, simply unbelievable for USA hockey.”

Hughes, who scored the game-winning additional time objective in opposition to Canada to win gold, mirrored on his interplay with the participant on the U.S. girls’s staff who did the identical, Megan Keller.

“Me and her had a fantastic second within the cafeteria after her gold medal recreation. We performed Slovakia the following night time, and it was like a late recreation. And we had been within the pasta line — me and Megan. They had been simply on the point of exit once more, and I simply gave her an enormous hug, and I mentioned, ‘I am so comfortable for you. I am so pleased with you,'” Hughes mentioned. 

“A pair nights later, noticed her once more within the [cafeteria], and we took a fantastic image and, uh, she simply gave me an enormous hug and was so pumped for me as properly.” 

Hughes instructed reporters after the sport the very first thing he considered when the puck went in was Keller, who scored the golden objective for the US girls’s staff in opposition to Canada three days earlier.

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The controversy surrounding the boys’s staff stemmed from a locker room telephone name between the gamers and Trump proper after their gold medal win over Canada. 

Trump instructed the boys’s staff after inviting them to Tuesday’s State of the Union handle that he’d “have” to ask the ladies’s staff, in any other case “I most likely could be impeached.” The staff laughed in response, prompting immense backlash. 

A number of mainstream media shops penned op-eds condemning the boys’s staff for laughing on the joke after which visiting the White Home to have fun and Trump’s State of the Union handle. 

U.S. girls’s hockey captain Hilary Knight mentioned on Wednesday’s version of ESPN’s “SportsCenter” that Trump’s “distasteful joke” has “overshadow[ed]” the ladies’s success.

“I believed it was kind of a distasteful joke, and, sadly, that’s overshadowing plenty of the success, the success of simply girls on the Olympics carrying for Crew USA and having wonderful gold medal feats,” Knight mentioned.

“We’re simply specializing in celebrating the ladies in our room, the extraordinary efforts, and proceed to have fun three gold medals in program historical past in addition to the double gold for each males’s and ladies’s on the identical time. And actually not detract from that with a distasteful joke.”

Hughes’ mom, Ellen, a former Crew USA participant and present participant improvement workers member, mentioned the gamers solely cared about “carry[ing] a lot unity to a bunch and to a rustic.”

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