How Hockey Got Drafted into the Culture Wars
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 26 February 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The gay romance show Heated Rivalry brought an influx of attention to hockey, and gold-medal winning performances from both the women’s and men’s American teams seemed to be priming the NHL for a fresh, diverse group of fans. Then Kash Patel showed up in the men’s locker room.
Guest: Frankie de la Cretaz, writer at the intersection of sports, gender, culture, and queerness, author of Hail Mary: the Rise and Fall of the National Women’s Football League and Out of Your League newsletter.
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everyone, it's Mary. Before I get started, if you're listening on Spotify, I have a really |
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| 0:17.8 | right at the top of our episode list. When you become a follower, |
| 0:21.4 | we can get you the good stuff every morning, no matter what. Okay, on to the show. |
| 0:30.6 | I think you could argue that the most bipartisan moment of the president's state of the union |
| 0:36.9 | address earlier this |
| 0:38.0 | week took place about 15 minutes in. |
| 0:41.5 | Members of Congress, the state of our union is strong. |
| 0:48.1 | Donald Trump butted this classically presidential line up against a different line that he |
| 0:53.8 | likes to roll out a lot. |
| 0:55.8 | Our country is winning again. In fact, we're winning so much that we really don't know |
| 1:01.3 | what to do about it. People are asking me. You know the one. The one about how we are winning |
| 1:07.4 | so much now, so much that people are actually begging the president to please call off all the winning. |
| 1:13.6 | And I say, no, no, no, you're going to win again. |
| 1:17.1 | You're going to win big. |
| 1:18.4 | And then President Trump almost blew out the microphone, welcoming the Olympic men's hockey team into the chamber. |
| 1:26.3 | To prove that point, here with us tonight is a group of winners who just made the entire |
| 1:32.2 | nation proud the men's gold medal Olympic hockey team. Come on in. |
| 1:40.2 | You'd think Oprah just gave everyone a car when this happened. |
| 1:46.5 | The team got a two-minute standing ovation. |
| 1:52.8 | Watching this clip, I had a lot of thoughts, but honestly, I know nothing about ice hockey. |
... |
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