The U.S. men’s hockey team should be riding a massive high.
An Olympic gold in overtime against our Canadian hockey rivals: That’s the kind of brand momentum that sells tickets, strengthens sponsorship deals, and builds the next generation of fans.
Instead, the U.S. men’s hockey team is dealing with a completely avoidable PR mess – one that could have been squashed with a simple apology and a clear, public show of support for the U.S. women’s team, who also brought home gold in overtime against our Canadian rivals.
From a crisis communications perspective, this was a textbook moment. Not because the issue was catastrophic, but because the response window was small.
When the post-victory moment around the remarks about the women’s team sparked backlash, the clock started. In high-visibility moments, silence doesn’t feel neutral. It feels dismissive. And overexplaining just keeps the story alive longer than it needs to be.
This was the play they didn’t call:
We’re proud of the U.S. women’s hockey team. We respect what they accomplished. Unfortunately, our reaction suggested otherwise. For that, we apologize.
Full stop.
That’s Crisis Comms 101: Acknowledge, align with your values, and move forward. No hedging. No parsing intent, versus impact. Just own it.
Instead, the delay let the narrative drift. What should have been a shared celebration of American hockey turned into a debate about respect and values. And when your brand is built on emotion and loyalty, that shift has real consequences.
A good reminder here is KFC’s “FCK” campaign when it ran out of chicken in the U.K. KFC owned it. Quickly. With that one campaign, the brand said: “We messed up. We’re sorry. We’re fixing it.” It worked, because it didn’t sound like a committee wrote it. It sounded accountable.
An apology doesn’t weaken a win. It protects it. It protects trust. And in crisis communications, trust is the asset you’re managing.
To their credit, some players have started to address it.
That’s a step in the right direction. But in crisis communications, timing is part of the message. The strongest responses don’t trail the backlash – they get in front of it.
They won gold. Now the question is whether their response will be strong enough to win back the narrative.
