The Result Carries Weight
Jack Eichel, Noah Hanifin and Jaccob Slavin already joined a very exclusive club when they led Team USA to a gold medal at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, ending the Americans' 46-year Olympic gold medal drought. Now, one of them will join an even smaller group by winning the Stanley Cup just four months later.
On Tuesday night, Eichel and Hanifin — playing for the Vegas Golden Knights — will face off against Slavin and the Carolina Hurricanes in the 2026 Stanley Cup Final. When the dust settles, at least one of them will have achieved something more historic than a championship.
The numbers are doing most of the announcement work here, which is usually how teams prefer it.
The Moment That Swung It
Only eight players in history have won an Olympic gold medal and a Stanley Cup in the same year. Only one of those players is American: Ken Morrow, who did it in 1980 as a defenseman on the "Miracle on Ice" team before joining the New York Islanders, who won four straight Cups from 1980 to 1983.
The most recent players to accomplish that double were Drew Doughty and Jeff Carter, who won gold with Canada at the 2014 Olympics before leading the Los Angeles Kings to a Stanley Cup. The list is so short primarily because NHL players have only competed in six Olympics — the first was in 1998, and there was a 12-year gap from 2014 to 2026 due to disputes between the NHL and the International Olympic Committee.
The Race Tightens
For the last 46 years, Morrow has stood alone as the only American to win both in the same year. He's about to get some company.