“I saw him. I tried to give him a hug. And he was like, ‘Not yet. Not yet. Give me one more day.’ I was like, ‘Alright. That’s fine,’” Jaccob Slavin said, describing his first moment back in Carolina after winning Olympic gold with Team USA on Feb. 22, 2026.
Slavin had returned to practice in Carolina a few days after the Olympic break and, true to his words, tried to bridge the rare gap created by the gold-medal game against Team Canada by reaching for teammate Seth Jarvis. Jarvis told Slavin he needed time — “So I needed more time,” he said — and the next day they “hugged it out.”
The moment was small and immediate: Slavin admitted he wore the gold medal into the Hurricanes’ first team meeting after the break, and Jarvis said, “He came in wearing his gold medal into the dressing room, and it set off a lot of emotions for me.” Jarvis later added that he and Slavin have since parked the Olympic gold medal game.
The exchange matters because these were not distant opponents but teammates who had spent the season together in Carolina before being split by nationality on the sport’s biggest stage. It also underscores how quickly NHL club life snaps back into motion after international tournaments — players return to practices and playoff preparations with new baggage attached.
Jack Eichel, who beat several of his Vegas teammates in that same gold-medal game, said he did not make a point of rubbing in the result: “I didn’t really, no.” He added, “I have so much respect for those guys,” pointing to the personal ties that outlast a single game: families and friendships that thread across national lines.
For members of the Golden Knights who faced Eichel and Noah Hanifin in Milan, the return was notably awkward. Shea Theodore said, “It’s definitely different,” walking back into the Knights dressing room a few days after the loss, but he tempered that with, “They’re awesome guys. Couldn’t happen to better guys.” Mark Stone put the result in blunt sporting terms — “We’re even” — and then laid out the scorecard of recent international meetings: “We won at 4 Nations. They won at Olympics. So we’re 1-1.” Stone added, “I’m happy for him,” and conceded, “But it sucks (that) it comes at the expense of us (Team Canada). But I am really happy for him. All the success that he has, I’m happy for him.”
The tug between private feeling and team cohesion is the story here. Slavin’s instinct to hug a friend and teammate the moment he saw him met a human pause; Jarvis needed a day to reconcile disappointment with the normal rhythms of a season. They resolved it quickly — no lingering score-settling, just a handshake and an embrace a day later — but Jarvis’s line about the medal setting off “a lot of emotions” is the friction the moment could not erase.
Now the players are back at work. Practices in Carolina and Vegas are the practical next act; the larger, unresolved question is whether the Olympic reunion will translate into a deeper run in the Stanley Cup playoffs. For Slavin and Jarvis, the public business is clear: they returned, addressed the moment, and moved into team mode. For the teams and the fans, the test will be whether that goodwill survives the next high-stakes game between players who once stood on opposite sides of an Olympic final.
