Jewish Hockey Players set for Winter Olympics
The U.S. men’s hockey team is stacked with Jewish players looking to make their mark during this year’s games.
In just a few short weeks, the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games will commence and for the first time since the 2014 Games in Sochi, the U.S. men’s hockey team will be stacked with NHL players. And the star-studded roster that is hoping to contend with global heavyweights such as Canada and Sweden has a robust Jewish presence with the Hughes brothers — Jack’s a perennial All-Star center for the New Jersey Devils, Quinn an elite defenseman for the Minnesota Wild — along with Boston Bruins veteran goaltender Jeremy Swayman slated to participate.
Meanwhile, defenseman Adam Fox, a franchise cornerstone of the New York Rangers, has an outside chance of being tabbed as an injury replacement — if such an opportunity presents itself and he bounces back from a recent lower body injury.
The NHL’s return to the Olympics after a 12-year hiatus has stirred early stateside interest in this year’s Winter Games. When the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic hockey teams were revealed just after New Year’s, Jack Hughes, flanked by U.S. women’s hockey player Laila Edwards and American ice sled hockey player/Paralympic gold medalist Declan Farmer, was featured on “The Today Show” as the face of the men’s squad.
“We’ve got a really good group of young hungry Americans that haven’t played in the Olympics before,” said Jack Hughes, the middle child in the Hughes family (baby brother, Luke, also plays for New Jersey but he will not be representing the Yanks next month in Italy). “We’re lucky the NHLers are back in the Olympics. Guys are pumped up and we should be really excited.”
Though all the current players were just a twinkle in their parents’ eyes when the United States shocked the world by knocking off the Soviets in the 1980 Lake Placid Games, the historical magnitude of the miraculous upset is not lost on them. They know a potential gold medal would etch their names in the annals of American sports history.
“It’s everything. If you’re a hockey player in the U.S., you grew up watching ‘Miracle on Ice’ and that’s like the biggest USA memory,” added Jack Hughes. “Every hockey player wants to grow up and play in the NHL, but I think the biggest dream is playing in the Olympics. It’s such an honor and such a privilege to be back and have that opportunity.”
Joining Jack on the American team is his older brother, Quinn, a slick-skating blueliner who copped the 2024 Norris Trophy as the NHL’s premier defenseman and was recently traded from the Vancouver Canucks to the Minnesota Wild for a package of players highlighted by 20-year-old Israel-American defenseman Zeev Buium.
While the eldest Hughes brothers were essentially a lock to crack the U.S. roster, there was less certainty about the fate of Bruins All-Star goalie Swayman, who a couple years ago, on the eve of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, shared that he had a bar mitzvah growing up in Anchorage, Alaska. After three consecutive spectacular seasons in net from 2021-24, Swayman regressed last winter to finish with career low numbers. Though his 2025-26 season has been marked by inconsistency, USA general manager Bill Guerin ultimately chose Swayman to round out the goaltending trio with Winnipeg’s Connor Hellebuyck and Dallas’s Jake Oettinger.
“I was really hoping to be a part of it,” Swayman told the Boston Bruins website after he received the congratulatory call from Guerin on Jan. 2. “But you get caught by surprise, and when the phone call finally comes, it becomes reality. It’s an incredible moment that I’ll never forget. I think it’s just a great opportunity to experience playing with the best of the best and representing our country — of course, something that is a lot bigger than us as individuals.
“That is something I can really get behind. That’s what I love most about this kind of event, is because you’re playing your heart out for your country and you’re representing more than yourself.”
While Swayman and the Hughes brothers look forward to representing the U.S. in the men’s hockey tournament, which runs from Feb. 11-22, the omission of Fox continues to raise some eyebrows around the league. In what has thus far been an injury-riddled season, the Jericho, N.Y., native and onetime Harvard standout has potted four goals and assisted on 24 others. Before sustaining his most recent injury, one that will sideline him until at least Jan. 31, Fox was informed that he didn’t make the cut for the Olympics. That the U.S. men’s head coach, Mike Sullivan, is also the bench boss for Fox’s Rangers only made the disappointing news harder to digest.
“Obviously, it’s disappointing,” Fox told the media after learning of his Olympic fate, merely days after returning from his first injury, one that shelved him for the entirety of December. “I thought I played as well as I think I could have and that decision comes out of your hands at a certain point. It is what it is. You just have to move on.”
Though Fox’s body of work across seven NHL seasons speaks for itself — he will likely go down as one of the league’s all-time most prolific scoring defensemen — it’s been posited that Fox may have been denied an invitation because he had an underwhelming showing in last year’s 4 Nations Face-Off, in which Canada bested the U.S. for the championship.
“I don’t think you have any expectation (to make the Olympic team) I would say, but I obviously thought my play this year was worthy of it and my track record as well,” Fox added. “But it’s out of my hands at a certain point. The decision is the decision, and I guess that’s how it goes.”
U.S. men hockey’s quest for gold begins on Feb. 12 when it takes on Latvia in a preliminary round matchup at Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena.