Currently, the American hockey team is competing in the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, with several active players on the roster, including Quinn Hughes of the Minnesota Wild. On Wednesday, the team is slated to take part in their quarterfinal matchup against the Swedish national team.
One of the stars of the show so far in the Olympics for the American team has been Hughes, whose facial expressions have raised some eyebrows on social media, due to his seemingly scared demeanor at times on the ice.
Recently, Hughes himself acknowledged the memes about himself.
“Sometimes you hear some funny stuff out there. But yeah… as the people say, I'm usually seeing ghosts, so I'm usually focused on myself,” said Hughes, per the Boston Globe, via SportsCenter on X, formerly Twitter.
The “seeing ghosts” phrase might ring a bell for some NFL fans, as at one point during the 2019 season, then-New York Jets quarterback Sam Darnold was caught on a hot mic saying the same thing to his coaches while his team was down 24-0 in the first half of a Monday Night Football game against the New England Patriots.
Of course, things would go on to turn out just fine for Darnold in his NFL career, as the quarterback recently won the Super Bowl as a member of the Seattle Seahawks, having gotten revenge on those same Patriots last week in a game played in Santa Clara.
Darnold has been quite impressive in shaking off some of the bust accusations from earlier in his career and turning his NFL trajectory around in the last two seasons, first with the Minnesota Vikings, and now with Seattle.
Hughes and his teammates will hope to experience a similar measure of success throughout the rest of the Olympic tournament, which is slated to continue on Wednesday with a game against Sweden in the quarterfinal round.
