Longtime DeMatha Hockey Coach Says Men's Olympic Gold Medal Game Was 'Pretty Incredible to Witness'

DeMatha hockey coach Tony MacAulay has watched, coached and played in thousands of hockey games. So, when he says the United States’ 2-1 overtime victory over Canada in the gold medal game of the Milano Cortina Olympics on Sunday was the best game he’s ever seen, it’s really saying something.

MacAulay said he came to realize this well before Jack Hughes lit up the lamp to give the USA its first gold medal in hockey since the “Miracle on Ice” 46 years ago. With national bragging rights on the line, it was way better than the NHL All-Star game and featured several future Hall of Famers.

“I started thinking to myself it’s not like you have the top two players from 32 different NHL teams, you have the best players from one country and the best players from another country that are the top players in the best league in the world,” MacAulay said. “That’s when it started dawning on me that I don’t know what to compare this to.

“It was pretty incredible to witness.”

MacAulay had more than rabid hockey fan and coach’s interest in the game. Connor McDavid, who led the Edmonton Oilers to the Stanley Cup Final last year and is one of the top five players in the world, is his cousin.

“His father and I are first cousins,” MacAulay explained, adding, “My father and Connor’s grandmother are brother and sister.”

Connor was named MVP of the 2026 Olympic hockey tournament after setting a record for most points (13, two goals, 11 assists) in a single Olympics involving NHL players. At last year’s Four Nations Face Off championship, he scored the game-winning goal 8:18 into overtime to lift Team Canada to a 3-2 victory over the USA.

MacAulay’s other personal connections to the Olympic tournament include Troy Ryan, head coach of the Canadian women’s team, which lost the gold medal to the USA by the same 2-1 score in overtime. He and Troy were high school teammates in Halifax, Nova Scotia and played junior hockey together.

In addition, MacAulay said Jeff MacLeod, head coach of the German women’s team, “is the same age as me and we grew up playing hockey against one another every single year. I played five years of college against him, and we played on All-Star teams together.

“Hockey is a really, really small world.”

MacAulay, who has been coaching for 30 years, including 24 at DeMatha and in the minor leagues, is a permanent resident of the United States and a Canadian citizen. His wife, Tina, is from Silver Spring, Md. Their children, Savannah, twins Brooke and Delaney and son Kaleb, a 2023 DeMatha graduate who played two years of junior hockey and is now a freshman at Keene (N.H.) State College, all have dual citizenship.

MacAulay, who has lived in the USA since 1997, wasn’t upset that his adopted homeland won the gold medal Sunday, but the Canada native was definitely cheering for the team with the maple leaf.

“Not just in my heart, I was cheering out loud at the television all game long, and cried when it was over that Canada lost, but it was more the emotion of the game,” he said. “I’m eager to see how hockey grows in this area and in the [United States].

“It doesn’t matter who won that game; that was a great game for hockey.”