SNL had an opportunity with U.S. hockey and Connor Storrie. It blew it.

Connor Storrie finally arrived on Saturday Night Live last night with a breezy, charming opening monologue on the fandom and the breakout success of Heated Rivalry. More than 1,000 people lined up outside 30 Rock hoping to get into the taping, a testament to how fast the 26-year-old former restaurant server became one of the hottest actors in America. Then came the inevitable twist, hinted at before the show aired but no less depressing when it unfolded on air.

As his monologue went on, Storrie was joined on stage by hockey-star brothers Quinn and Jack Hughes, fresh from the gold-medal-winning U.S. men’s hockey team. The team has spent the past week engulfed in backlash after a leaked video showed them partying with FBI Director Kash Patel post-win and laughing as President Trump joked he’d “have to” invite the women to the White House alongside them or he’d “probably be impeached.” Undeterred, the team followed this by allowing themselves to be used as MAGA props at the State of the Union, and then a week of non-apologies that made everything worse.

On SNL, after somewhat muted applause, the Hughes brothers admitted they hadn’t watched Heated Rivalry, the show that has done more for hockey’s cultural reach than anything the league has managed in years. (“It’s about hockey, right?” Hughes attempted to joke. “Kind of,” Connor said with a mischievous grin.) Then U.S. women’s hockey captain Hilary Knight and teammate Megan Keller also made surprise appearances, to notable roars from the audience.

Storrie went on to speak about the importance of his show representing people who aren’t always seen in hockey, as Quinn Hughes looked at the floor. Meanwhile, Knight and Keller, who had watched the show, spent the monologue addressing the week’s controversy with the humor and poise the Hughes brothers wouldn’t or couldn’t manage themselves. Delivering one of the best lines of the night, Knight said with a grin, “It was gonna be just us, but we thought we’d invite the guys too.” Keller followed, “We thought we’d give them a little moment to shine.” The audience loved it—because the audience, unlike the men who laughed along with Trump days earlier, understood who had earned the goodwill in that room, and who was borrowing it.

Saturday Night Live should never have turned Storrie’s debut into this, a grim spectacle of the U.S. men’s hockey team having its reputation laundered on live television by the very people its behavior disrespected. And yet that is precisely what happened: the cleanup has been outsourced to the women who’ve spent the week answering for the men’s behavior and to the star of a gay hockey love story whose show brought a new generation of fans to a sport that just told them they don’t matter.

It does not take a communications professional, though I am one, to recognize this for what it is.

For U.S. men’s hockey, this week should have been a thrilling and uncomplicated triumph. Instead, within days, the team’s general manager had invited the embattled FBI director into their locker room celebration, the president’s congratulatory call had turned into a punchline about the women’s team, the players had attended the State of the Union, and then they were giving interviews lamenting that “everything is so political.” (The women’s team declined the invitation to D.C.)

Enter NBC. Both SNL and The Tonight Show—where both Hughes brothers will also appear tomorrow alongside Knight—are NBC properties. NBC just broadcast the Olympics. The U.S. men’s hockey team gave NBC its biggest single ratings event of the Milan games. Of course it makes ratings sense to book gold medalists on late night, and Storrie was announced as this week’s SNL host before the men’s team became a PR crisis. But the decision to put the Hughes brothers in his monologue, alongside the women whose team Trump’s joke was about, was not a coincidence. This is NBC running damage control on its own air. And USA hockey is more than happy to let it.

Yet the men themselves have done remarkably little to earn any of it. Of the 23 men on that roster, very few have offered something in the neighborhood of regret. Boston Bruin Charlie McAvoy said he was “certainly sorry for how we responded to it in that moment,” referring to Trump’s comment. Fellow Bruin Jeremy Swayman said the team “should have reacted differently.” Columbus Blue Jacket Zach Werenski acknowledged “it doesn’t look great.” Notice how none of them are the Hughes brothers.

Jack Hughes, when asked directly whether he agreed with Swayman, said: “It is what it is.” He told the Daily Mail that people are “trying to find a reason to put people down and make something out of almost nothing.” He told ESPN: “Everything is so political. We’re athletes,” a fascinating thing to say during a week in which he attended the State of the Union as a Trump stooge. Quinn told Good Morning America that there’s “a lot going on with social media right now surrounding their team and our team,” before stressing how close the two teams had been in the Olympic Village—and then noting that they were “excited to go” to the State of the Union. The men’s mother, Ellen Hughes, a player development consultant for USA women’s hockey, was deployed on Today to talk about “unity” and “synergy.” No apology from the boys, though. Just mom doing the work on national television, which, in hindsight, was a preview of what was to come.

Knight, for her part, has two gold medals. Three silvers. Fifteen Olympic goals and 33 points, both all-time records. She scored the tying goal in the final minutes of her fifth and final Olympic game, the kind of moment that should define a legacy. Now she has spent the days responding to this mess. At a recent press conference, Knight called Trump’s joke “distasteful and unfortunate” before adding the thing that should make everyone involved in these two bookings feel abashed: “Now I have to sort of sit in front of you and explain someone else’s behavior. It’s not my responsibility.” She then walked onto the SNL stage and turned the joke that demeaned her team into the biggest laugh of the monologue, a dispiriting moment in itself. She was, as she has been for two decades, impossibly gracious about a situation that did not require her grace. On Monday, she’ll do it again on The Tonight Show, seated next to the men who still haven’t managed it themselves.

Then there’s Storrie. A few months ago, as he noted on the show, he was waiting tables. Now he’s hosting SNL. His portrayal of Ilya Rozanov, a closeted Russian hockey star navigating a secret decade-long romance with his on-ice rival, made him one of the most-talked-about actors in the country overnight. The show has become a cultural phenomenon: Its viewership exceeds 10.6 million U.S. viewers per episode. The NHL has called it “the most unique driver for creating new fans” in the league’s 108-year history. Interest in hockey tickets on StubHub increased by 40 percent. LGBTQ hockey leagues reported surges in aspiring new players. Closeted professional athletes have reportedly reached out to the show’s stars to share their stories. And Storrie has used his platform to advocate for queer youth in sports. His fans came to hockey because the show told them there was room for them.

Last night should have been one of the biggest nights of his life, and in many ways it was. But his monologue, the moment that should have belonged to him, became a vehicle for the men’s hockey team’s rehab, as he spent part of it holding together a segment built around two hockey players who couldn’t be bothered to watch the show or understand its impact.

Roughly two-thirds of Heated Rivalry’s audience is women. The show’s most passionate online communities are women and LGBTQ+ fans. And they’ve been paying attention this week. They watched players laugh when the president treated the women’s gold medal as a political inconvenience. They watched some of those same players put on MAGA hats, the symbol of an administration that has spent the past year banning Pride flags from federal buildings, targeting trans rights, and making clear at every turn where it stands on equality. And now the fallout has been put on a woman who has spent 20 years being the best to ever play her sport, and an actor whose show handed hockey the biggest new audience it’s had in a generation.

NBC has an Olympics franchise to protect. USA Hockey’s men’s brand took a hit. But who was last night actually for? The people who lined up to see Storrie did not show up to watch the men’s hockey team try to pave over what happened. The people who are furious that some are “politicizing” a gold medal aren’t tuning into SNL, a show that has spent the better part of a decade roasting Trump. There was no decent reason for this to be the venue.

Heated Rivalry showed hockey a whole new horizon of fans. The women’s team backed it up with a gold medal of its own. The men’s team won gold, then torched its goodwill almost instantly. Not one of them has been asked to fix it.