Carolina Hurricanes defenseman Jaccob Slavin achieved a feat only one other American hockey player in history has accomplished by winning the Stanley Cup and an Olympic gold medal in the same year.
Slavin’s Hurricanes capped their Cup-winning run by beating the Vegas Golden Knights 3-0 in game six on Sunday night.
With it, Slavin joined Miracle on Ice defenseman Ken Morrow in lifting the Cup and donning Olympic gold in the same year. Morrow won four consecutive Cups with the New York Islanders from 1980-83.
“I used to joke I was a trivia question for a lot of years: Who’s the only guy that ever did that? Only player I was at that time, not just American, but the only player,” Morrow told The Associated Press last week.
Slavin, who grew up on about 25 acres in Erie, Colorado, with over 250 animals, including potbellied pigs and llamas, is the fifth American to win a Cup and Olympic gold over a career.
The others were Morrow, fellow 1980 team member Neal Broten and Slavin’s 2026 Olympic teammates Jack Eichel and Matthew Tkachuk.
Eichel and Noah Hanifin, both on the Golden Knights, were attempting to achieve the same-year double in the Stanley Cup Final, too.
Canadians previously won Olympic gold and a Cup in the same year: Steve Yzerman and Brendan Shanahan (2002), Jonathan Toews, Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook (2010) and Drew Doughty and Jeff Carter (2014).
Jack Hughes’ gap-toothed grin became the picture-perfect encapsulation of a sport where missing teeth is a badge of honor and “spittin’ chiclets” is so ingrained in the lexicon that it’s the name of a popular hockey podcast, not just the candy-coated chewing gum pieces that are somewhat tooth-sized.
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