One good man: What Team USA’s hockey gold can teach conservatives about winning

As conservatives, we should celebrate America’s gold-medal hockey win over Canada. We should also reflect on it.

Why? Because we are a morbid bunch of doomsayers. Inside every silver lining, we see a cloud, and we never miss an opportunity to forecast how everything is about to go horribly wrong.

The God of hockey is also the God of nations. He can do a lot with one good man.

We are morbid because we are so analytical. We break things and situations down into their component parts. We measure. We estimate. We look at the numbers, and from the numbers, we draw our conclusions.

Numbers game?

The problem is that, when it comes to the culture, the numbers are rarely on our side. Let’s be honest, they haven’t been on our side for a while, but that’s why we should reflect on the United States’ victory over Canada.

Statistically, Canada outplayed the United States. Anyone who watched the last two periods could tell you: Man for man, America was getting outplayed.

It really just came down to the fact that we had one player they couldn’t beat: our goalie, Connor Hellebuyck. Canada outshot the United States in the last two periods 33 to 18. The numbers weren’t on our side, but the one man who mattered was.

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Photo (left): ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP via Getty Images; Photo (right): Leah Millis-Pool/Getty Images

'God has a name'

More than 50 years ago, the future Pope Benedict XVI noted modern life's tendency to reduce men to faceless statistics: "The machines that he himself has constructed now impose their own law on him: He must be made readable for the computer, and this can be achieved only when he is translated into numbers."

"But," he continued, "God has a name, and God calls us by our name. ... For Him, we are not some function in a 'world machinery.'"

In life, as in sports, victory does not always yield to the data. It just takes one good man to go into the breach; one man, completely outnumbered, who stands up when all others have fallen and says, “You cannot pass.”

Cultures aren’t defined by numbers. They are defined by people. So be courageous, be hopeful, and take a stand in the breach. The God of hockey is also the God of nations. He can do a lot with one good man.